Instant Nutrition Boosters
Easy Ways to Lose Weight: What You Drink
Why is weight loss important?
Healthy Eating Special Health Report [excerpt]

Instant Nutrition Boosters Bob Greene BestLife - by Janis Jibrin, RD - Got a minute? Then you've got time to make a major difference in your diet. These easy, quick and painless changes will help slim you down and infuse your diet with more vitamins, minerals, fiber and phytonutrients. 1. Pull out the peanut butter. Replace regular butter with peanut or almond butter. For the same calories, they keep you feeling full longer than butter or margarine. It could be the high protein count—4 g per tablespoon. And their monounsaturated fats are good for the heart. 2. Sub whole for white. It’ll put you closer to the recommended daily 25 – 35g for fighting cancer, heart disease, constipation and obesity. Switch from: a slice of white bread (1g fiber) to whole wheat bread (2 – 3g); a cup of regular pasta, cooked (2g) to whole wheat (6g); an 8-in. flour tortilla (1 – 2g) to an 8-in. whole wheat tortilla (5 g); a cup of regular cous cous, cooked (2g) to a cup of whole wheat cous cous, cooked (7), and an ounce of corn flakes (0g) to an ounce of raisin bran (4g) or Fiber One or All Bran (13 - 15g). 3. Trade saltines for whole rye crackers. You get 8 times the fiber, plus rye’s got lignans, compounds which may help prevent breast and colon cancer. In supermarkets and health food grocery stores look for Ryevita and Wasa brand crackers. 4. Use a smaller plate. You get instant portion control with a smaller cereal bowls, dinner and dessert plates. Plus, you don’t feel deprived ‘cause it looks like so much food. 5. Try broccoli sprouts. Just grab a handful when there’s no time to cook broccoli. They’re crammed with 10 to 100 times more of the vegetable’s cancer-fighting compound, sulforaphane. In Johns Hopkins University research, lab animals on sprout-rich diets cut breast cancer risk in half. 6. Use salsa for more than a dip. Add a cup to your next pot of vegetable or bean soup; or mix some into brown rice or scrambled eggs when they’re just 15 seconds from done. Salsa is rich in tomato’s powerful antioxidant lycopene, and antioxidant linked to protection against heart disease and cancer. 7. Get the flax. It’s the richest plant source of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA)—a type of omega-3 fat. Sprinkle a tablespoon of ground flaxseed on your cereal for 1.8g of this healthful fat, nearly bringing you up to the recommended 2.2g of ALA per day. Or, try flax waffles (sold frozen in health food groceries) and flax-based cold cereals. 8. Make a one-minute lunch. Slice a whole wheat pita into 8 triangles and dip the pita wedges and a half cup baby carrots into 1/2 cup store-bought hummus. For just 400 calories you’ve racked up 14 grams of fiber—more than half the daily requirement for a woman—plus nearly triple your daily vitamin A requirement. 9. Fill time gaps without filling your stomach. If you’re always busy, you might not know what to do with your down time; so you snack. Instead, use the time to relax, stretch, think about an upcoming vacation or any number of things that don't involve food. 10. Switch to sweet potatoes. Despite their sugary flavor and creamy texture, sweet potatoes and yams are actually a little lower in calories than regular potatoes. Even better, a typical 4-ounce, 5-inch long sweet potato covers three times your daily vitamin A needs in the form of cancer and heart-disease-fighting beta carotene, compared to none at all for the pale spuds. You’re also scoring double the vitamin C, and 26 percent more fiber. 11. Drink your vegetables. Don’t have time to wash and chop? Six ounces of vegetable juice counts as one of your three or more daily vegetable servings. 12. Double the vegetable power of your sauce. You’ve covered one vegetable serving in a half cup spaghetti sauce; make it two by throwing in a half cup frozen vegetables. 13. Pick the right pepper. Red’s got 10 times the vitamin A and more than double the vitamin C as green pepper. Just one cup of sliced peppers and you’ve covered your daily requirements for these two nutrients. 14. Take a minute to measure. Just once or twice, and then you don’t have to do it again. But to truly get a handle on portions you’ve got to measure cereal, pasta, rice, nuts, peanut butter, salad dressing, and other foods that are easy to overeat. Place the food in the bowls and plates you typically use; next time, you can simply eyeball the portion. 15. Change your internal script. For instance, replace: “I’m bad because I ate that extra slice of pizza” with “An extra slice of pizza isn’t going to make or break me, it’s how I eat over the long run that counts.” Otherwise you’ll undermine self-confidence, and, ultimately, the ability to stay on a healthy diet track. When negative thoughts about your body or your diet crop up, take a few secs to formulate a quick retort. 16. Tell yourself “More doesn’t taste better.” Give yourself this 5-second reminder before piling it on or going back for seconds and thirds. 17. Keep a feelings log. Jot down what you’re feeling when you crave food or overeat, even it’s just one word. Sometimes people can’t put a name on the feeling; “uncomfortable” is a good start. Identify emotional cues is a good start to conquering emotional eating. 18. Turn coffee into café au lait; espresso into latte. The 300mg of calcium in a cup of skim milk may help offset the bone-thinning effects of coffee. A University of California at San Diego study found that coffee drinkers who drank milk had a lower risk of developing osteoporosis than those who weren’t milk-drinkers. 19. Trade fruit juice for fruit. Fruit juices run 112 – 153 calories per cup (8 oz.) compared to about 60 calories for a piece of fruit. Plus fruit contains fiber--for instance 3 - 4g in a medium orange or apple—while fruit juice has none. 20. Boost iron with vitamin C. Eaten along with a meal or snack, just 25 mg of C—the amount in an orange, tomato or a few red pepper strips—doubles iron absorption from cereal, nuts and other plant-based foods. And 50mg hikes up absorption four to six-fold. New research shows that low, but not yet anemic, iron levels curtail exercise endurance and attention span. - Article courtesy of BestLife Diet   Easy Ways to Lose Weight: What You Drink by Jennifer R. Scott WHAT YOU DRINK Sometimes it's easy to focus so much on what we eat that we forget to include what we drink in our diet analysis. That can be a big problem, because the number of liquid calories you can consume without even realizing is quite astounding. PUT THE KIBOSH ON COLA CONSUMPTION If you drink regular soda, you may be surprised at just how many additional calories you're taking in. For example, for every 20 ounces of Coca-Cola you drink, you're consuming 250 calories. Drink several glasses a day and you can easily down 1,000 liquid calories. If you're attempting to consume around 1,500 to 1,600 calories a day in order to lose weight, you've almost blown your entire calorie budget on soda! When you think about how many calories you eat on average and then add in those empty calories, you'll realize what a waste drinking these sugary drinks is -- literally -- they go straight to your waist! If you drink a lot of soda, think of how many calories you'll be saving if you trade it in for diet soda or water. Hundreds? Even thousands? Remember, every 3,500 calories saved equals one pound lost! DRINK UP THAT H20! I know it sounds like a broken record, but it really is important to drink enough water every day. Reach for the rule-of-thumb goal of eight glasses per day. Plus, drinking water more often will help you with tip #1 . You won't have time to drink soda! You may even find you crave water instead of soda once you begin drinking it more often. Try going a day or two with no soda and then sit down to a glass; you'll probably be shocked at how overly-sweet it tastes. DIET DRINK DILEMMA Switching to diet sodas may sound like a sure-fire way to lose weight since they're virtually calorie-free. However, there is a controversial issue about artificial sweeteners' indirect effect on weight loss that might surprise you. In the mid-1980's -- when the safety of artificial sweeteners was often headline news -- a study was published in a medical journal that suggested artificial sweeteners cause one's appetite to increase. More recently, some health experts have suggested that artificial sweeteners actually cause cravings for sweet foods to increase. If so, this reaction definitely sets you up for making poor food choices. This can lead to a big problem, particularly if you tend to binge when you eat high-carb and sugar-rich foods. STICK TO MINERAL WATER This may go without saying, but they don't call it a beer belly for nothing. Alcoholic beverages are high-calorie and can lead to out-of-control eating. Try to cut down -- or better still, eliminate -- alcohol. Article courtesy of: About.com Health / Weight Loss / Support & Motivation

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