Juice Recipes for Weight Loss

Juice recipes for weight loss have to be one of the most natural and best ways to stay healthy as you lose weight.  Forget about the fad diets and those celebrity-endorsed virtual starvation weight loss programs. Adding natural healthy juices to your daily eating plan is streets ahead.

These wholesome juices can take the place of less healthy food choices, so you don’t have to deprive yourself. Done right and to your specific liking, they can be delicious!

The first thing you’re going to have to do is to invest in a juicer. I say invest because that is exactly what it will be for you and your body - an investment.  Juicers come in all shapes, sizes and price points. Some of them can do a variety of other things such as pulping and chopping, but a basic juicer will serve you well to try out some juice recipes for weight loss.

Decide on your favorite fruits and vegetables and make sure that the produce you use is as fresh as you can find. Go with what’s in season in your nearby farmer’s market or grocery store.

The great thing about using juices to help you lose weight is that what you come up with can be as personal as the clothes you wear and how you wear them.  No one is going to be preparing and drinking the same juice recipes in the same way as you.

Fancy a carrot and apple juice for breakfast?  Then simply wash your carrots, peel and core your apple then throw them all into a juicer, in whatever quantities you desire. Add a splash of lemon and you have yourself a lovely breakfast juice.

A juice like this is stuffed full of beta carotene, iron and vitamin C. But if this doesn’t get you going in the morning then simply throw in even more vegetables. Put in a little yogurt for some protein as well.

The real key to finding and using juice recipes for weight loss is to make sure that you try a variety of juices.  Think about this, the number one reason that many people fail to lose weight is because they get bored with what they are eating.

They crave their favorite foods and feel disgruntled that they are not ‘allowed’ to eat and enjoy them.  Now, there is virtually no way you should fall into the trap of getting bored with your juices.  Just make sure that you are mixing them up regularly. Variety is the spice of life - and your juice for weight loss.

For instance, that apple and carrot breakfast juice could be so easily changed and refreshed by adding a stick of celery to the mix or even a hand full of strawberries and some crushed ice.  Just make sure that you are using all of your favorite fruits and vegetables in a variety of groups.

Mix up your juice recipes for weight loss and your choices will stay refreshing and keep you craving for more.

Lose Pounds When You Are 50 Pounds Overweight

June 15, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Diet Aids, Diets, Exercise, Nutrition

Are you trying to lose weight ?  Some people only want to lose 5 to 10 pounds, but if you have more than 50 lbs. to shed, you should consider more dramatic weight loss strategies.  You are not going to lose this much pounds overnight.  Instead, try a balanced approach to losing weight over time.

Aim to lose weight at a rate of 1 to 2 pounds per week.  But, don’t dive right in.  Instead, spend a week planning your diet.

First of all, weigh yourself.  You will also want to keep a  journal of everything you eat each day for a week.  Include portion sizes.  Also note any activity including working out, heavy house cleaning or lawn work, sporting events or active play with children.  Don’t do anything out of the ordinary during this week.  Specifically, don’t decrease your normal calorie load or alter your normal foods.  Also, do not try to do anything different with your activity levels.

The reason you start with this is that you want to develop a baseline for losing weight. When you see what you are actually doing, you can plan a good, effective strategy.

Go through your food journal at the end of the week.  Calculate how many calories you ate each day.  Calculate how many calories you burned each day.  Then weigh yourself at the end of the week.  Have you gone up, down or stayed the same?

Now, you can begin the substitutions.  If you gained a pound, you will have to burn an extra 3500 calories each week just to stay even.  If you want to lose 2 pounds, you will have to burn an extra 7000 calories.

Here are some simple substitutions:

  • Eat only two servings of red meat per week.  Substitute chicken or fish for all other meat meals.
  • Consider substituting legumes (such as beans) as your protein source, instead of meat.
  • Add salads and vegetables to your meals.  You should have one or the other at lunch and both at dinner.
  • Add a broth based soup to your dinner.  Eaten before the meal, it will help you fill up faster.
  • Eat breakfast every day.  People who eat breakfast lose more weight and lose weight faster than those who don’t.  Great diet breakfasts include oatmeal and yogurt based fruit smoothies.

You should also add exercise to your lose pounds program.  Don’t think that this requires you to join a fancy gym.  Retire the housekeeper and do your housework yourself.  A 180 -ound woman who cleans the house for an hour will burn 250 calories.  And, more vigorous cleaning such as 20 minutes of scrubbing your floors on your hands and knees burns over 100 calories.  Even playing with your kids can help you lose pounds.  Just 30 minutes of active play can burn off 200 calories.

So, if you are trying to lose weight and you have 50 or more pounds to go, consider doing a week of baseline monitoring. Follow up with food and lifestyle changes.  The only way to do it is to cut down your food intake, make healthier choices - and combine this with exercise. When you have to get something done, go the active route. Climb the stairs, walk the dog farther, play with your kids more… you will be happier and lose weight along the way.

Body Colon Cleanse - Clear Your Intestines, Lose Weight

May 19, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Diet Aids, Diets, colon cleanse

The body colon cleanse is all the rage these days. What is it and why is it so important to clean out part of your intestines? Basically, you build up a lot of excess junk in your system. This is not only unhealthy, it also keeps you from losing weight. The body colon cleanse helps you lose weight by cleaning your system out.

One example of a body colon cleanse regimen is called the lemonade diet. It was created by the late naturopath Stanley Burroughs. It involves fasting to rid the body of toxins which build up due to poor diet, lack of exercise - even negative thoughts and stress.

The body colon cleanse will dissolve and eliminate toxins and body congestion. It will clean up the kidneys and digestive system. It even can supposedly purify glands and eliminate waste and deposits in the joints and muscles. Clean this all up and you can start to build a healthy bloodstream which in turn leads to developing optimal blood pressure.

The big bonus here is that the body colon cleanse will help you lose weight. Most people lose about 2 pounds a day with no harmful side effects.

The lemonade diet should be followed for exactly 10 days. During this period, you will not eat anything and you will only drink a specially formulated lemonade. You need to drink at least 10 servings of the lemonade a day. This can be difficult to manage without discipline and will power, but the rewards could be worth it.

The recipe for the lemonade is as follows: fill a one gallon water jug with the juice of five lemons, 1 and 1/2 cups of Organic Grade B maple syrup (no substitutes), 1/10 tsp. or more of cayenne pepper, and fill the rest of the jug with purified or spring water. It is important not to use fluoridated tap water.

When you get up each morning that you are on the body colon cleanse, you need to do a salt water flush. Mix two level teaspoons of unionized sea salt with a quart of lukewarm water and mix. Drink this all right away.

Then in the evening you will want to take an herbal laxative tea which you can find in most grocery stores.

You should be prepared to use the restroom a lot while on the body colon cleanse. Specifically, you should be prepared to go every 15 or 20 minutes. If you have a job or other activities that will not accommodate this need, you may want to consider putting the program off until you can fit this within your schedule.

You may think that drinking only lemonade, saltwater and tea with no food for 10 days is dangerous. Well, you are certainly not going to die on this diet, but you will be hungry. Surprisingly, you will probably find that you have more energy as the diet goes on, despite the lack of food.

At the end of the body colon cleanse, you can expect to have lost anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds. Do note that this is mostly water weight and will be quickly regained if you do not follow a sensible eating and exercise plan to maintain your target weight.

Many notice that after a round of cleansing they have increased energy, and an increased desire to eat healthy foods. Some go as far as saying they feel somewhat different about life in general.

Those who make it through a body colon cleanse are generally very glad that they did it.

Learn to Eat Thin with a Calorie Counter Guide

May 13, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Calorie Counter, Diet Aids, Diets, Nutrition

Your greatest weapon in the war against your weight is your mind. You need knowledge and will power. The knowledge starts with a good calorie counter.

The calorie counter is a guide that will tell you the nutritional and caloric values of various foods. Some come in good-old book form, some are like small handy computer devices. Armed with a counter, you will be able to track how many calories you are eating throughout the day, as well as if you are taking enough protein and fiber. Not to mention if you are taking in too much bad carbohydrates, fat, salt or sugar.

The sad fact is most people do not have any real awareness of how much food they are really putting into their body. We also need much guidance on how many calories are in what we’re putting in. Most often people underestimate their food needs.

Dieting for weight loss works with this simple premise: eat less calories than what you are burning off with exercise or daily activities. The thing is, if you don’t have some idea of how many calories you’re taking in, it’s going to be very hard to make any progress towards getting control of your weight.

Most of us cannot run ten miles a day to burn off so much calories. So we do need help figuring out how much our normal two or three mile run stacks up against our regular food choices. This is where a good calorie counter guide comes in.

Like anything else, though, even the best calorie counter guide is not going to do you a bit of good if you don’t use it. This means that you’re going to have to start measuring and recording what you eat. It will take some work in the beginning, but it gets easier with regular use.

Eventually, you’ll learn to eyeball the amount of food you’re eating. By instinct you will be able to make smarter food choices. But at first you need to measure them, either by eating things that are pre measured, or by using a scale. In a pinch, you can just estimate, but you won’t be getting the most out of your calorie counter guide if you do that.

What you’re trying to do here is establish a baseline of calories - the level where you are neither gaining nor losing weight. Once you know how many calories you need to keep your weight stable, you can look at reducing the level you’re taking in so that you begin to lose weight.

The best way to do this isn’t to just start eliminating foods willy nilly. If you do that, you’re just going to feel deprived. This often leads to you snapping to take out an entire all you can eat buffet!

The better method is to replace some of the higher calorie foods with lower calories alternatives - hopefully alternatives you can also enjoy. And don’t deprive your self. It’s all about managing portions while eating the food you normally eat. To manage those portions, you will need a good calorie counter.

Eat Out Without Guilt - Use That Restaurant Calorie Counter

May 11, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Calorie Counter, Diet Aids, Diets, Nutrition

A restaurant calorie counter can be a dieter’s best friend. Losing weight needs work, but you do not have to be too hard on yourself. There are days when you crave for some restaurant fare. Other times you just need the convenience of eating out. Those restaurant calorie counters allow you to do this and still stick to your diet.

Ideally, we would all like to be able to prepare healthy, low calorie meals at home. No guilt. With smiles on our faces. We know this is not always possible.

In reality, people sleep late, work late, and sometimes the boss wants you to have lunch with him. Unless your eating out is going to consist of glasses of water and salad with no dressing, you are going to need a restaurant calorie counter to make sure you don’t eat anything that will hijack your diet.

Many restaurants already offer use of these counters as guides to the calorie and nutritional values of items on their menus. Generally, these are available for all chain type restaurants - including fast food chains like McDonalds. There are also local guide calorie counters that have the information for other specialty restaurants.

So take advantage and use these guides. If you are using a controlled nutritional plan, then you can easily look up the calorie count and make wise decisions on what to eat. Or you can choose dishes with the right amount of fat or carbohydrates for your plan.

Every diet is easier with a restaurant calorie counter. With regular use of these guides, you will eventually learn to make wise food choices instinctively.

And really… the only way to lose weight and keep it off for good is to be armed with the right food knowledge. No complicated, “ground-breaking” diet book is going to do this for you. All you need is a calorie counter.

Count On Weight Loss Calorie Counter Success

May 10, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Calorie Counter, Diet Aids, Diets, Nutrition

If you have the right setup, it is possible to have reliably predictable weight loss. But that set up would require a calorie counter.

Believe it or not, most of us - barring any medical condition - have bodies that are remarkably good at maintaining our weight. Most people gain pounds slowly, maybe five or ten pounds a year, if we’re not careful. Broken down into daily calories, this is a very slim margin of error which is why a weight loss calorie counter can help you.

For example, if you gain twenty pounds of fat over the course of a year, that means you ate an additional seventy thousand calories. Now, seventy thousand calories sounds like a lot, and it is, but do you know how many calories that is each day? Less than two hundred.

A weight loss calorie counter will tell you that two hundred calories is not a lot of food. It is a candy bar, or an extra helping of mac and cheese, or a bottle of soda. Skip a few - or maybe even just one - of these calorific foods a day, and you can can reach your weight loss target.

To lose weight, we only have to make some fairly small adjustments to our diets. The calorie counter will break this down for you to show you exactly what you need to remove from your normal everyday diet. You will realize, the sacrifice is really not that big for most of us

The very first thing you need to do is start writing down what you eat. Everything you eat - including drinks. Don’t worry, it will only be a bit tedious in the beginning. Once you have established a baseline, you can easily consult your weight loss calorie counter on a daily basis.

After you do this, you need to figure out how many calories you are taking in by looking up the caloric content of the foods you’re eating. This is why it is important to know exactly how much of each food you are taking in so that you can make the calculations correctly.

You can then track the amount of calories you are eating - wether for weight loss or maintenance. Once you know get the numbers, you can begin to tweak the amount of food in your daily diet.

The trick is to make substitutions that won’t cause you to just make up for the calories elsewhere. For example, replace the soda with water, or if you really crave some “taste” a low calorie juice. Another way is to reduce the amount of meat you eat while increasing the veggies. Skipping the fried stuff and using healthy oils will also help.

You should always be on the look out for simple ways to reduce calorie intake. It really should not be too difficult or else you end up not doing anything at all. No results. A weight loss calorie counter can show you all this. Page through it to find some other options for you to eat. You will be surprised at how many alternate foods you’ll be able to find… easily.

Weight Loss Made Simple with a Calorie Counter Chart

May 7, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Diet Aids, Diets, Nutrition

A calorie counter chart may be just the thing you need to finally lose weight. Successful weight loss actually boils down to following a simple calorie reduction plan.

Simple of course does not mean easy. You do have to have the will power and discipline to carry out those calorie reductions. That’s the hard part for most of us. But with a calorie counter chart, you are off to a good start.

You don’t really need all those different diet books with all their touted special schemes. Their recommendations can be hard to follow. Skipping entire food groups and following special menus can be tedious. Of course, people have successfully lost weight following the latest diet bestseller. Question is: how successful are they at keeping the pounds off?

All you really need is one good calorie counter chart to trim down those pounds. And using a simple plan means not just successful weight loss, but also successful weight maintenance. With a calorie counter chart, chances are you can sustain whatever weight loss you achieved - for the long haul, or for life even.

Weight loss really is simple, despite whatever anyone else tells you. You need to eat just enough food to make up for calories burned-off from exercise or your daily activities. The calorie counter chart helps you do this by letting you know if what you are eating is too much versus how many calories you using up on a daily basis.

With this system, you don’t need to skip entire food groups or deprive yourself of what you normally eat. You can eat what you like, but in moderation - or as prescribed by your calorie counter chart. Keeping a daily log will even allow you to eventually gauge how your eating stacks up against your daily routine - with or without exercise. This can promote good eating habits in the long run.

This is actually even easier than it sounds. It takes a trivial amount of calories each day to lose weight. If you can drop as little as 400 calories as a day, you can drop forty pounds over the course of a year. Check your calorie counter and maybe you’ll see that all you need to let go is that creamy daily latte or that slice of cake or muffin you take in during coffee break. With the help of the chart you could see that you can still indulge - but perhaps just on weekends - and still trim down significantly.

What you need to do this is consult a calorie counter chart every time you eat, at least until you have memorized your favorite foods and how you can accommodate them within a sensible eating plan. Once you know how much you’re eating, just cut down on the portions or cut of the things you like least. Do this, and you will be losing weight the easy way… and more importantly, keeping it off.

Electronic Calorie Counter - A Handy Weight Loss Tool

May 5, 2009 by Patsie  
Filed under Calorie Counter, Diet Aids, Diets, Nutrition

Computers have been around a long time and they have become smaller and handier enough to help us with a myriad of things. So why not calorie counting for weight loss? That’s what an electronic calorie counter is for.

An electronic calorie counter is a computer about the size of a small, thin notebook that can easily be carried in your pocket or purse. With this handy device you can look up the caloric and nutritional values of thousands of foods. Some models even have a diary function for you to log what food you take in on a daily basis - complete with actual number of calories and nutrients consumed.

You can probably imagine how helpful this can be if you are following a meal plan for weight loss. Let’s say you have plan based on a nutritionist’s guidelines. With the electronic calorie counter you can just log in your food intake and let the computer help you determine if you are on the right track based on your nutritionist’s food and calorie recommendations. At a touch of a few keys, you can get accurate, precise data. No tedious calculating on your part. No faulty estimates.

Most people tend to underestimate their food intake. Be off by as little as 200 calories per day and you can find yourself gaining 20 pounds in a year’s time. An electric calorie counter with a diary function will let you pick what foods you should be eating and in what amounts. It will automatically record the food and calculate the amount of calories.

This is actually a huge help for most of us. For one thing, it is always good advice to keep a food diary. But it is generally not done, because looking up everything you eat, writing it down, and then figuring out your calorie calculations is just a hassle. Instead of going through all that hassle, all you need to do is look up the appropriate food, select it, and the electric calorie counter will do the rest of the work for you.

An electric calorie counter is also helpful in meal planning. If you are at restaurant, for example, and are looking at two possible meals, you can look them both up on the counter and select the meal that fits best with your goals - wether weight loss, maintenance or even weight gain.

A good electric calorie counter will also allow you to add other foods into its database, usually at least 1000 new foods. This means you can even add your favorite homemade meals. All you need to do is calculate the calories of each ingredient add them together and enter the new food into your electric calorie counter. This means you can make space for Mom’s casserole without it ruining your diet or maintenance plan.

An electric calorie counter is a cheap, versatile and a powerful to tool to help you manage your weight loss. So go ahead… take advantage of technology that will help you accomplish your weight loss goals. The precise, accurate and easy-access data will let you accomplish that faster and more efficiently.

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