Knowing Our Stomach and Body

Will you be able to find another person exactly like you? If the answer is “No,” what made you think that every person’s stomach behaves in the same way, accepting all the inputs in the same fashion. This is a basic mistake we often make.

Believe me, your stomach may not be behaving in the same way as your friend’s stomach does to a particular food item, be it a chicken piece or a burger. We must know that a particular food, which may be good for certain people, may not be suitable for others. Haven’t you heard the proverb, what is wine for Paul may be venom for Peter.

The Indian system of Ayurveda and yoga is considered as the best way to explain the different types of body nature. The basic constituents are classified as five elements.

Five Elements:

Earth: All life forces become inert and inactive in this element and more energy is used to keep it active. People with more weight, flesh, fat etc. are good example of predominance of this earth matter in their body. They do not show any anxiety and are not eager to acquire anything, they try to keep away from conflict and their life is moving slowly. When there is a disorder of this element in the body people become selfish and get attached to selfish enjoyments. It is a neutral element.

Water: It keeps the flow of body and life. But it has a natural tendency to cool down. As there is more than 70% water in the body it plays a very important role in the maintenance of heat and circulation of blood etc. It is a negative element.

Fire: It is creating fire in the body – heats the water. It regulates sight, provides strength to the body by digesting the food, induces hunger and thirst, and also maintains suppleness of muscles and beauty of complexion. It helps thinking and facilitates the discrimination power of the brain. It helps production of antibodies.

In short it is the starter of our body-car. Defects in the same causes anemia, jaundice and other digestive problems, and also causes fainting, epilepsy, derangement of brain besides diminishing eyesight and causing growth of cataract in the eyes, it produces acidity and also creates skin problems ad depigmentation.

That is why great importance is given in eastern therapies to control and preserve the element of fire. It is a positive element.

Air: Air is life itself. It is the strength and conducts every part of our body. It regulates the function of heart, circulation of blood and maintains balance of the body.

It helps respiration and downward movement of stools and urine. It produces sound. Nourishes mental faculties and also the faculty of memory. It moves bile and phlegm, which cannot move in the body by themselves. It is a positive element.

Space: In order that air circulates in the body and maintains a proper balance, there has to be space. If such circulation is blocked, it creates pain even leading to heart attack, paralysis, fainting etc. It is a negative element.

Start Losing Weight Today!

I'll start my diet on Monday. How many times have you told yourself that? Right after New Years', I swear. Tomorrow. Are you tired of hearing yourself say the same old excuses day after day, month after month, year after year? If so, listen up! Here are five things you can do to start losing weight today!

Activate.

The most important ingredient in your weight loss plan is exercise. If you think that's a dirty word, it's time to clean it up. Exercise is just what you do every time you move. Starting today, resolve to activate your life. Leave the car keys behind and walk to the corner store.

Race yourself to get your housework done in ten minutes less time (because the more vigorous your movement, the more calories you burn). Get off the elevator one floor early and walk up the stairs. Every extra active thing you do will burn calories - and the more calories you burn, the more weight you'll lose.

When you're ready to really activate, get a physical workout designed with your interests in mind. Join a gym, take up a sport, or walk 10,000 steps a day. But don't wait until you think you can do it all. Just take a few extra steps today.

Motivate.

Grab a pen and notebook and start writing down all the reasons you should lose weight. Don't stop till you get to ten, at the very least. Here are some suggestions:

1. I’ll be healthier - losing as little as 10 pounds can decrease your risk of heart disease, diabetes and a host of other weight-related illnesses.

2. I’ll save money. Super-size costs more - whether it's an extra $2 for the nightgown you want or having to travel first class for the seat space.

3. I’ll be able to keep up with my kids. It takes energy to keep up with kids, and extra weight saps your energy. Lose ten pounds and see how much better you feel.

4. I’ll get back into my favorite jeans.

5. I’ll find souvenir t-shirts that fit anywhere I go.

Cogitate.

Got your ten reasons? Don't stop writing. Keep that pen and notebook with you all day and write down every single thing you put into your mouth. Just for one day. You'll be surprised at all the 'unexpected' calories you catch yourself eating. The last two French fries on your son's plate. The two bites of chicken you tasted to make sure of the seasoning. The 'just one bite' of your husband's ice cream cone. The handful of potato chips you snagged from the bowl on your way by. Write down every single bite for one day to make yourself aware of all the food that you didn't even realize you were eating. Once you find it, you can start cutting it out.

Educate.

Take a trip to the Internet and visit these educational sites:

The American Heart Association

The USDA Food Pyramid

iVillage Diet and Nutrition section

The Diet Channel

The South Beach Diet web site

The Atkins Diet web site

The Mayo Clinic web site's Diet and Nutrition pages

Educate yourself about healthy diets and weight loss, and find a diet that you believe you can live with for the rest of your life. It's the only way that you'll lose weight and keep it off permanently.

Salivate.

If you think that diet food is boring, find a good low-fat cookbook and start re-educating your taste-buds. Healthy, low-fat, low-carb cooking is delicious - prove it to yourself with a recipe for dinner. While you're at it, pick one for tomorrow night, too. You can start your diet AGAIN tomorrow!

Weight Loss Strategic

One of the first things that you'll do when you decide to lose weight is to set a goal weight. For most, that goal will be their 'ideal weight', but for many, that 'ideal weight' may be exactly the wrong weight for them to be aiming for.

Years of dieting or being overweight have the physiological effect of moving the body's concept of the 'ideal weight' from what is truly considered ideal. The 'set point' is the weight at which your body naturally feels most comfortable.

If you've been overweight for a very long time, or if you've consistently 'yo-yoed', your body may respond to your initial weight loss by lowering its metabolism because it believes that you are starving to death. This slowing leads to discouraging plateaus that often knock people off their diets entirely, and lead to regaining all or part of the lost weight.

Instead of aiming for an 'ideal weight' that calls for you to lose weight steadily for months or even years, many experts recommend aiming for shorter-term attainable goals. Since the bulk of diet research shows that most dieters lose weight steadily for about 12 weeks, then hit a plateau, that's the number that they suggest you aim for. The strategy that many have found works best for them is one of alternating periods of weight loss and maintenance, each lasting 8-12 weeks.

Choose a realistic amount of weight that you can lose in 8-12 weeks. Figuring that the most reasonable and healthiest weight loss rate is 1-2 pounds per week, 30 pounds in three months is not unreasonable. Diet until you reach that goal, or for 12 weeks, whichever comes first, and then switch to a maintenance diet.

Why switch to a maintenance diet at that point? In part, you're giving yourself a 'breather', a break from more restrictive eating. The other part, though, is that you're re-educating your body and letting it establish a new 'set point'. Once you've maintained your new weight for 8-12 weeks, set another weight loss goal, and move back into weight loss mode. By giving your body a break from 'starvation', you'll have overcome its resistance to losing more weight, and be back to dieting for 'the first two weeks' - the weeks that most people lose weight more rapidly.

You'll also be giving yourself a chance to 'practice' maintaining your new, healthier weight. Researchers have found that more than half of the dieters who take off significant amounts of weight do not maintain that weight loss once they go 'off' their diet. By practicing weight maintenance in stages, you'll be proving to yourself that you CAN do it, and removing a powerful negative psychological block.

This will work with any long-term weight loss diet, no matter the focus. You'll find it much easier to do if you choose a diet that has concrete 'phases', like the South Beach or the Atkins, since the weight loss and maintenance phases are clearly laid out for you to follow. Regardless of the diet you choose, though, by alternating between weight loss phases and maintenance phases, you'll teach yourself and your body how to maintain a healthy weight.

The Most Practical Diet You Ever Try

Americans lose millions of pounds a year - only to gain most of it back within a year. You've probably heard over and over again that the real secret to losing weight permanently is to make permanent changes in your eating habits and lifestyle. Throughout decades of high protein, low protein, Air Force diets, Atkins, Scarsdale diets, cabbage diets, eat-all-you-want-and-still-lose-weight diets that is the one piece of advice that has remained strong. No matter what the latest diet craze, over and over throughout the years, the one "diet" that effected a long-term, permanent weight loss was the 'eat a well-balanced, portion-controlled diet and exercise regularly'.

Why are fad diets so popular? Diets feed our need to be actively doing something. Weighing, measuring, counting - whether its calories, exchanges or carbs - all give us the feeling of gaining control over our bodies and our weight. In the long run, though, all the measuring and obsession with what, how much and when we eat becomes overwhelming. When we stop living by strictly controlled guidelines set out by other people -the latest diet guru - the weight comes back.

There is a practical way to lose weight that doesn't involve arcane combinations of foods to set up an ideal balance of foods that burn more than they give, or that promise to 'turn your body into a fat-burning machine'. It is to simply eat a healthy balance of all types of foods in portions that are reasonable for your body, while at the same time raising your activity level to burn more calories than you take in. Below are some practical guidelines to help you adjust your diet and lifestyle to help you lose that weight - and keep it off permanently.

1. Adjust your attitude. You're not going on a diet - you're eating what your body needs. To maintain your weight loss, you'll need to maintain your new eating habits for the rest of your life - and that's a far easier prospect if your diet plan is one that makes sense and is easy to maintain.

2. Think square when you plan your meals. Like a square has four corners, so should your meals. At every meal, include a protein, a healthy fat, a grain/legume and a fruit/vegetable.

3. Eat three squares and at least two snacks every day. Your snacks should be in the grain/legume or fruit/vegetable corner.

4. If you're under stress, eat something every two hours. Your body sends out distress signals when you're putting it under stress. Give it healthy fuel to keep it working right.

5. Aim for no more than 60 grams of carbohydrate per day at first. Spread the carbohydrates over the course of the day - 15 at each meal and 7 at each snack.

6. Limit dairy products to 3 or less daily.

7. Completely avoid soft drinks - even the diet ones.

8. Drink 6-10 glasses of water each day.

9. Eliminate 'white foods' from your diet. Do away with white sugar,

white flour and white cereal products.

10. Take a nutritional supplement - at least a good multivitamin daily.

10 Real Life Diet Tips

Are you tired of diet tips handed out by someone with apparently unlimited income and time? For some of us, it may just not be practical to spend half of our Sunday preparing carefully portioned meals for the rest of the week, or financially feasible to buy all our meals prepackaged in just the right portions. And there are those of us who cringe at the thought of weighing food to achieve 'optimal portion sizes'. Here are ten real life diet tips for the rest of us.

1. Eating out? Restaurant portions tend to be enormous, and if it's on the plate, we tend to eat it. If it's possible, order from the kid’s menu, where portions are more reasonably sized.

2. Keep healthy snacks around and easily accessible. A bowl of fruit on the kitchen table, a container of celery or carrot sticks in the refrigerator, or a couple of pop-open cans of fruit salad in your desk at work will help you grab for something healthy when those first hunger pains begin. In other words, you'll be more likely to grab something low-calorie and good for you if it's easy to eat.

3. Substitute frozen vegetables for canned. Canned veggies tend to be high in sodium, which you don't need, and low in real nutrition, which you do. Buy economy size bags with zip closures to make it easy to pour out a single serving for a meal.

4. Buy a vegetable steamer. Steaming is one of the healthiest ways to cook vegetables. The food retains nearly all of its natural nutrients instead of leaching it out into the cooking water. Even better, it makes your veggies taste great - which means you'll be more likely to eat them instead of filling up on fatty foods that pack on weight.

5. Never eat standing up. One of the easiest ways to sabotage your diet is to 'eat without thinking'. Treat eating with the respect that it deserves. Fix yourself a plate. Sit down and eat properly. You'll be less likely to just pop food into your mouth without paying attention.

6. Spread your meals out. When you eat three meals a day, your body tends to store whatever it doesn't need right that moment. By adopting a 'grazing' habit, you'll keep your metabolism working throughout the day. Have a small breakfast, a piece of fruit with crackers or toast at mid-morning, a light lunch and an 'after school snack' mid-afternoon. Just remember that you're breaking up the same amount of food into smaller meals, not ADDING more food into your daily diet.

7. Grab a fruit juice or flavored water instead of soda. Soda is nothing but empty calories. No nutrients, lots of sugar. Instead, grab a bottle of 100% fruit juice, or water flavored with a spritz of fruit.

8. Drink water. Even the FDA recommends at least 8 full 8 ounce glasses of water a day to keep your body working right. When you're dieting, you should drink even more. It's not just that full feeling - water helps your body digest foods properly and cleans out your system.

9. Can't afford a gym membership? Make a pact with friends to exercise together. Make a date at least three times a week to play volleyball, take a walk or spend half an hour doing something active.

10. Skip the potato chips. Fatty snacks fried in hydrogenated oil like potato chips contribute fat and calories and not much else. Instead, grab a handful of dried fruit or a cup of yogurt for the same amount of calories and a lot more nutritional benefit.