Most people are impatient. They want results now.
This is particularly true when it comes to weight loss.
If you cut down your eating and go to bed hungry every day for a week, you expect to be rewarded by losing 5 pounds!
That is not the case.
Remember that when you first launch on your weight loss program, you have to create a caloric imbalance before the weight starts to come off.
So, for the first week after you begin, and go to bed hungry for 5 days, you very likely won't lose any weight (particularly if you take up weight training - which you should do.)
But after about 5 days, your body reaches the point where it recognizes that it isn't getting as much food as it used to, and it will start burning up the excess fat it has stored.
Then, and only then, will you start to lose weight.
And then... only perhaps a quarter pound a day, so two pounds a week
So do not get impatient. Cut back on your food gradually - more importantly cut back on sugary drinks or eliminate them altogether, start exercising moderately, and after *two* weeks you will begin to see success.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Take your blood pressure medication!
Spent most of yesterday in the hospital, where my mother was admitted. Her doctor had changed her blood pressure medication a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't doing the job. Unfortunately her doctor was out of town and a home therapist said we should take her to the Emergency Room.
Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.
Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.
She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance... she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....
The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.
Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.
Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...
Bad idea, as far as I'm concerned. Put her back on her old medication which was working, just causing her to cough.
Instead we brought her to the emergency room, and since she's old and deaf, this got her more stressed out and scared than ever, because they were all gathered around her shouting questions and wanting to run tests and I'm sure she thought she was dying or something, which sent her blood pressure even higher.
She spent the night there, and is still in today for more tests, which I don't think she needs but I guess since they've got her in there they want to get their money's worth out of our insurance... she's in a private room which must be costing a fortune....
The reason for my headline... she was about 40 when she was first diagnosed with high blood pressure...took pills for a couple of days but didn't like how they made her feel....so she stopped taking them and tried to do the "natural remedy" thing.
Result, 20 years later she had congestive heart failure, and now instead of taking 1 pill a day she has to take 4. And has to go into the hospital periodically on occasions like these.
Moral of the story - go get your blood pressure checked, and if you have high blood pressure make sure you take your meds, otherwise believe me you'll wish you had, when it is too late...
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Lose Weight And Get Paid, A Gambler’s Analysis
From The Inquisitr, an interesting article: Lose Weight And Get Paid, A Gambler’s Analysis
Will you lose weight if you get paid? “Money talks” was the conclusion of a Mayo Clinic study presented earlier this month to the American College of Cardiology conference in San Francisco.
The prestigious clinic’s Dr. Steven Driver is the lead author of the year-long research on 100 employees and their family members aged 18-63 who had a body mass index (BMI) high enough to qualify them to be considered obese.
The rules were simple. If you lost four pounds in a month, you won
$20. If you didn’t meet your goal, you paid in $20 to create a bonus
pool. All players, even if they didn’t lose weight, had a chance to win
the bonus pool at the end of twelve months as long as they had stayed in
the program.
Dieters in a group that didn’t participate in the game lost a puny 2.34 pounds over the course of the year. Dieters in the game lost an average of 9 pounds. Players who had paid a penalty were more likely to stay in the program for the entire year than players who didn’t.
Dr. Driver and the Mayo Clinic thought the results were evidence that, if you’re paid, you’re more likely to lose weight. Well, yeah OK. I’ll give him that much. A teeny tiny bit of weight.
But c’mon. If the goal is to lose four pounds a month in 12 months, everybody missed it by a mile.
What they really proved is that gamblers chase their losses. At some point, you have to figure that the weight is not coming off and that your best chance of getting your money back is to hang in there and hope they call your name in the random lottery.
The study isn’t about losing weight. It’s about the money.
Here’s what Dr. Driver told CNN’s Matt Sloane: “About 86% of large employers are already offering some kind of financial incentives to help employees reach their health goals. But one problem employers run into with financial incentives is that they can be expensive. Part of our model was to allow the so-called ‘losers’ to fund the ‘winners.’ ”
Now the light is starting to dawn. Employers want their employees to lose weight and get healthy, but they don’t necessarily want to pay for expensive treatments that might actually work like bariatric surgery. The gambling game might be a fun way to get employees to shed pounds while making them pay for the privilege.
I’ve got no problem with a business trying to save a buck. On the other hand, I’m fascinated with how to crack gambling games. The Mayo Clinic game was close to unbreakable because you had to be an employee or a close relative and you were monitored by professionals who could measure your weight, BMI, and so forth in person.
However, the new study has given a rash of publicity to sites like Healthy Wage and Diet Bet, which allow you to join online weight loss gambling games. No doubt I’m a force for evil, but when writer Tim Ferris announced he’d be hosting a $1,000,000 contest on DietBet last fall, the first thing I’m thinking is, “OK, how do I get my hands on a piece of the million dollars?”
And I don’t really have any extra weight to lose.
Now these sites do have rules to prevent professionals from gaming the system. Here’s DietBet’s statement:
What ultimately protects the games from cheaters looking to pick up a few extra bucks? It turns out that it’s just so not worth it.
Far from attracting a million-dollar pot, the Tim Ferris challenge created only a $33,700 pot, returning a measly $93 on a $50 investment to the 362 official winners. And that may be the biggest pot ever created on the site. Biggest Loser 11′s Hannah & Olivia have started a pot for a challenge beginning Monday — and, at the time of writing, the total was $31,925 contributed by 1,277 players. Sure, the pot will grow as players join, but so will the number of people you have to split the money with.
And most pots seem to have less than a few hundred dollars to be divided among the winners.
By this gambler’s math, the game is reasonably safe from cheaters because the amount of money you stand to win isn’t worth the trouble.
Have you participated in a game where you lose weight to get paid?
Will you lose weight if you get paid? “Money talks” was the conclusion of a Mayo Clinic study presented earlier this month to the American College of Cardiology conference in San Francisco.
The prestigious clinic’s Dr. Steven Driver is the lead author of the year-long research on 100 employees and their family members aged 18-63 who had a body mass index (BMI) high enough to qualify them to be considered obese.
Dieters in a group that didn’t participate in the game lost a puny 2.34 pounds over the course of the year. Dieters in the game lost an average of 9 pounds. Players who had paid a penalty were more likely to stay in the program for the entire year than players who didn’t.
Dr. Driver and the Mayo Clinic thought the results were evidence that, if you’re paid, you’re more likely to lose weight. Well, yeah OK. I’ll give him that much. A teeny tiny bit of weight.
But c’mon. If the goal is to lose four pounds a month in 12 months, everybody missed it by a mile.
What they really proved is that gamblers chase their losses. At some point, you have to figure that the weight is not coming off and that your best chance of getting your money back is to hang in there and hope they call your name in the random lottery.
The study isn’t about losing weight. It’s about the money.
Here’s what Dr. Driver told CNN’s Matt Sloane: “About 86% of large employers are already offering some kind of financial incentives to help employees reach their health goals. But one problem employers run into with financial incentives is that they can be expensive. Part of our model was to allow the so-called ‘losers’ to fund the ‘winners.’ ”
Now the light is starting to dawn. Employers want their employees to lose weight and get healthy, but they don’t necessarily want to pay for expensive treatments that might actually work like bariatric surgery. The gambling game might be a fun way to get employees to shed pounds while making them pay for the privilege.
I’ve got no problem with a business trying to save a buck. On the other hand, I’m fascinated with how to crack gambling games. The Mayo Clinic game was close to unbreakable because you had to be an employee or a close relative and you were monitored by professionals who could measure your weight, BMI, and so forth in person.
However, the new study has given a rash of publicity to sites like Healthy Wage and Diet Bet, which allow you to join online weight loss gambling games. No doubt I’m a force for evil, but when writer Tim Ferris announced he’d be hosting a $1,000,000 contest on DietBet last fall, the first thing I’m thinking is, “OK, how do I get my hands on a piece of the million dollars?”
And I don’t really have any extra weight to lose.
Now these sites do have rules to prevent professionals from gaming the system. Here’s DietBet’s statement:
“We have a photo review process in which players submit proof of their initial and final weights to our team of Referees. We also have algorithms that detect unusual activity within a game or across games and use an auditing system where some players may be required to submit extra proof of their weight loss using: a Skype weigh-in with one of our Referees, a video weigh-in, or an in-person weigh-in at a location pre-approved by DietBet.”I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow how-to, but if you can’t hack that system, turn in your copy of Photoshop.
What ultimately protects the games from cheaters looking to pick up a few extra bucks? It turns out that it’s just so not worth it.
Far from attracting a million-dollar pot, the Tim Ferris challenge created only a $33,700 pot, returning a measly $93 on a $50 investment to the 362 official winners. And that may be the biggest pot ever created on the site. Biggest Loser 11′s Hannah & Olivia have started a pot for a challenge beginning Monday — and, at the time of writing, the total was $31,925 contributed by 1,277 players. Sure, the pot will grow as players join, but so will the number of people you have to split the money with.
And most pots seem to have less than a few hundred dollars to be divided among the winners.
By this gambler’s math, the game is reasonably safe from cheaters because the amount of money you stand to win isn’t worth the trouble.
Have you participated in a game where you lose weight to get paid?
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Never get involved in a land war in Asia
and never agree to transcribe 20 hours of meetings from an Australian business meeting.
That's what I've been doing for the last 4 days...utter nightmare. Could NOT understand their accents. Making it worse were the bad audio levels and the fact that a lot of the people preesnt insisted on talking over each other from all around the room except in front of the microphone... I will never transcribe ANYTHING every again.
Anyway, so sorry to be MIA from my blogs.
That's what I've been doing for the last 4 days...utter nightmare. Could NOT understand their accents. Making it worse were the bad audio levels and the fact that a lot of the people preesnt insisted on talking over each other from all around the room except in front of the microphone... I will never transcribe ANYTHING every again.
Anyway, so sorry to be MIA from my blogs.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
You can get this book at your local library, or if you've got Amazon Prime you can borrow it for your Kindle. It's by Stephen R. Covey.
Just allows you to put everything in perspective.
A bit of a religious touch every now and then, but not too obtrusive.
Recommended because any stress you can get out of your life will help you with your weight loss program.
Just allows you to put everything in perspective.
A bit of a religious touch every now and then, but not too obtrusive.
Recommended because any stress you can get out of your life will help you with your weight loss program.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Food has calories...deal with it!
This is very disturbing news...
Supermarkets cry foul as FDA proposes new food labeling rule under ObamaCare
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/06/jail-time-for-food-labels/#ixzz2KFFpqUlP
If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier.
Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone.
Store owner Tom Heinen said the industry's profit margins already are razor thin. "When you incur a significant cost, there is no way that that doesn't get passed on to the customer in some form," he said.
The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores, the backlash was swift.
The proposed regulation would require store owners to label prepared, unpackaged foods found in salad bars and food bars, soups and bakery items. Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel at the Food Marketing Institute, said testing foods for nutritional data will require either expensive software or even more costly off-site laboratory assessments.
Lieberman said failure to get it right comes with stiff penalties: "If you get it wrong, it's a federal crime, and you could face jail time and thousands of dollars worth of fines."
The FDA says much of ObamaCare is aimed at helping Americans live healthier lives, and these proposed labeling requirements would help them do just that. In the text of the proposed regulation, the FDA states: "[The information] should help consumers limit excess calorie intake and understand how the foods that they purchase at these establishments fit within their daily caloric and other nutritional needs."
An Executive Order issued by President Obama in 2011 says agencies are supposed to calculate a cost-benefit analysis for each new regulation and attempt to use the least burdensome regulatory methods possible. Critics of the FDA's food labeling proposal say the agency didn't comply.
"They are required to do it, and they didn't," Lieberman said. "They simply said, 'We can't quantify a benefit from this rule,' and that's because they really can't."
The FDA said Wednesday it has received hundreds of public comments on the proposal and will take them into consideration when finalizing the regulation. It is likely to be released later this spring, and the agency says it will "include a final economic analysis."
Supermarkets cry foul as FDA proposes new food labeling rule under ObamaCare
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/06/jail-time-for-food-labels/#ixzz2KFFpqUlP
If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier.
Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone.
Store owner Tom Heinen said the industry's profit margins already are razor thin. "When you incur a significant cost, there is no way that that doesn't get passed on to the customer in some form," he said.
The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores, the backlash was swift.
The proposed regulation would require store owners to label prepared, unpackaged foods found in salad bars and food bars, soups and bakery items. Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel at the Food Marketing Institute, said testing foods for nutritional data will require either expensive software or even more costly off-site laboratory assessments.
Lieberman said failure to get it right comes with stiff penalties: "If you get it wrong, it's a federal crime, and you could face jail time and thousands of dollars worth of fines."
The FDA says much of ObamaCare is aimed at helping Americans live healthier lives, and these proposed labeling requirements would help them do just that. In the text of the proposed regulation, the FDA states: "[The information] should help consumers limit excess calorie intake and understand how the foods that they purchase at these establishments fit within their daily caloric and other nutritional needs."
An Executive Order issued by President Obama in 2011 says agencies are supposed to calculate a cost-benefit analysis for each new regulation and attempt to use the least burdensome regulatory methods possible. Critics of the FDA's food labeling proposal say the agency didn't comply.
"They are required to do it, and they didn't," Lieberman said. "They simply said, 'We can't quantify a benefit from this rule,' and that's because they really can't."
The FDA said Wednesday it has received hundreds of public comments on the proposal and will take them into consideration when finalizing the regulation. It is likely to be released later this spring, and the agency says it will "include a final economic analysis."
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
February is almost here...
And I for one am glad of it.
One more month closer to spring, when it will be easier to get out and about and get some exercise out of doors... for those of us who aren't interested in winter sports!
It's been a while since I've posted here and I apologize.
So, let's take stop. Step on the scale today and see how your weight loss program is going. If you've been sloughing off, rededicate yourself to getting fit, and as a byproduct, losing weight.
Getting fit is *the* key, managing weight is a bonus that comes with that fun task.
One more month closer to spring, when it will be easier to get out and about and get some exercise out of doors... for those of us who aren't interested in winter sports!
It's been a while since I've posted here and I apologize.
So, let's take stop. Step on the scale today and see how your weight loss program is going. If you've been sloughing off, rededicate yourself to getting fit, and as a byproduct, losing weight.
Getting fit is *the* key, managing weight is a bonus that comes with that fun task.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
OMG!
Never realized I hadn't posted in over 2 weeks!
Sorry, folks
Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.
Sorry, folks
Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Soup is a good meal
Soup can be a good meal. The liquid feels the belly and keeps you full longer, and all the food you put in it can make a good meal - from chicken to beef, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms... or if you like tomatoes or things of that nature, put them all in as well.
Don't be afraid to make enough soup for several days. Soup - along with most meals, always tastes better the second day, as all the flavors have had enough time to coalesce.
Check out your local library or book store for cookbooks that focus on soups.
Don't be afraid to make enough soup for several days. Soup - along with most meals, always tastes better the second day, as all the flavors have had enough time to coalesce.
Check out your local library or book store for cookbooks that focus on soups.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Holidays over, time to get to work
Well, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years are over.
No more temptations to over-eat because of never ending food-commercials, or holiday parties given on a daily basis, etc.
You've made your New Year's Resolutions, right?
So, time to start making them come true.
If you break one or another of them, that's no need to abandon them! Remember that resolutions are a process - just like everything in life is a process.
Be patient, work toward your goals, and you will achieve them.
No more temptations to over-eat because of never ending food-commercials, or holiday parties given on a daily basis, etc.
You've made your New Year's Resolutions, right?
So, time to start making them come true.
If you break one or another of them, that's no need to abandon them! Remember that resolutions are a process - just like everything in life is a process.
Be patient, work toward your goals, and you will achieve them.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Don't give in to depression
Most people overeat for one of two reasons. They're either bored or they're depressed. (And if they're bored, they're probably depressed to be bored.)
One way to prevent yourself from eating while you're bored or depressed (and I'm talking about normal depression, not clinical depression) is to get out of the house. Not to go to a mall or some place that has food, but to a book store, or to a place where you can walk and get some exercise.
Substitute other activities for eating. Take a nice hot bath or something of that nature, if it's too cold to go outside. Put on a record with some cheerful music and dance. Anything to get the blood flowing and your lips turning upward.
One way to prevent yourself from eating while you're bored or depressed (and I'm talking about normal depression, not clinical depression) is to get out of the house. Not to go to a mall or some place that has food, but to a book store, or to a place where you can walk and get some exercise.
Substitute other activities for eating. Take a nice hot bath or something of that nature, if it's too cold to go outside. Put on a record with some cheerful music and dance. Anything to get the blood flowing and your lips turning upward.
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