Healthy Eating

blue-kat

Ms_london
just a thought: are your thyroid hormone levels being checked?
my levels were dropping and just couldn't consistently lose weight, just kept yoyo-ing through same few pounds, but since thyroxine has been increased it's been easier to lose weight.
enjoy your exercise, endorphins and all
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bluemoon_3

https://www.fitday.com is a good site to keep track of eating, exercising, weight loss, nutition, and such like. I admit I use it more to make sure I'm getting adequate nutrients rather than for weight loss, but I think it would be a great tool for that too.

Oh, and it's free to register and use if you use the online version. It's an American site, so a lot of our brand names won't be on there, but you can add "custom" foods, which are then saved under your user name.

It's the best diet-tracker site I've found, and it's a fantastic resource for the price. ( ).

Jet

Personally I think incorporating as much exercise as possible into your life is good. Simply walking to the shops instead of driving will make all the difference in the long run.

Diets don't work. I read yesterday that 90% of the population have been on a diet at some point in their lives and nearly all have gained the weight they lost on the diet!

Eating sensibly and only when you're hungry is the key. I think dieting makes you focus on food too much. Being chilled out about food is the way forward. Allowing yourself a few treats is good too. If you tell yourself you are "not allowed" something it makes your mind concentrate on that thing all the more.

Ted_Hutchinson

Pritikin and Weight Loss
Pritikin Eating Plan
I heard David Aaronovitch talking about this on Radio 4 last week but the same information can be found at
SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | Weekend sends David Aaronovitch ...
He certainly sounds like an evangalist for a changed way of eating and living but I'm not sure I fancy going to these extremes.

Callisto

Hi, I got some advice from the nutritionist at the gym I used to attend (no longer go as can't afford the £35 a month!) I need to lose weight - approx 3 stone, but am not actively trying at the moment as I'm waiting to start a new job and then moving house, so will wait until I'm more settled...

Anyway, nutritionist said it is best to eat regularly, every 3 to 4 hours (obviously only when you are actually hungry) as this keeps your metabolism fired up. Skipping breakfast, having a snack for lunch, then eating a massive meal in the evening makes the metabolism sluggish and less efficient (she likened it to a log fire burning - if you top up with small or medium logs regularly, fire burns well, but if you leave the fire all day, then shove a large log on it, the fire will not work properly!)

Also said that the body needs essential fats (omega 3 and 6), found in oily fish and seeds such as sunflower, sesame, linseeds etc. She suggested sprinkling some seeds over cereal or mix with yoghurt if you're not very keen on fish.

The body WANTS to lay down fat, which is another reason why not eating regularly is bad. The body thinks there may not be food readily available, so will convert the little food you do eat straight into fat.

So (and this is the difficult part) the body gets used to your calorie intake and exercise levels very quickly and then works out how much fat it can lay down using your eating & exercise patterns (most people tend to eat roughly the same kind of meals each week, we all have our favourites!)... so you need to be constantly changing your calorie intake and doing different exercise or longer or shorter sessions to 'trick' the body into losing weight. If the body can't 'guess' what you are going to eat or the amount of exercise you will do on a given day, it's more likely to let go of some of the fat!!

Hope that's easy to understand! Most of this had never dawned on me before I saw the nutritionist, ultimately your body is only trying to help you to survive the 'starvation' times... be nice to your body!

Ted_Hutchinson

Center for Science in the Public Interest Salt the forgotten killer
Salt: It’s Not Just Hypertension
Salt may cause health problems not necessarily linked to
hypertension, though further research is needed in some
cases.
■ Salt increases the body’s excretion of calcium. The evidence is mixed on whether that also leads to loss of bone mass and osteoporosis or other health problems.
■ Because it increases calcium excretion, salt may promote the formation of kidney stones.
■ High-salt diets impair lung function and worsen asthma
symptoms.
■ Diets high in sodium appear to cause higher rates of
infection with Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers.
■ Salt promotes stomach cancer in laboratory animals and is associated with higher rates of stomach cancer in Japan.
■ A study of overweight people found that a 2,300 mg higher daily consumption of sodium was associated with an 89 percent increase in stroke mortality and a 44 percent increase in mortality from coronary heart disease. Those effects were identified after controlling for blood pressure and other important variables, suggesting “the possibility of an independent direct effect of sodium intake on cardiovascular disease.”

the body normally needs only about 180 mg per day
to replace the sodium lost in urine, sweat, and feces,7
and the Yanomami Indians in Brazil and Venezuela
consume only about 20 mg per day.

wendyf_3

Does anyone know where you can buy the Weight Watchers cookbooks apart from at meetings? You used to be able to get them quite cheap in Asda but they seem to have stopped !!
Thanks

blue-kat

try ebay for WW books
also W W books (different spelling)
hope this helps !
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nabowla

Our local library has all of the WW cookbooks. It might be worth seeing if you can borrow them from your library to try them out before you buy.

squeaky

And then you can also make a note of the ISBN numbers of ones you like to make it easier to search for copies.