All Entries For weight loss
You're probably familiar with the terms "apple" and "pear" when they apply to body shapes. People who are apple shaped tend to carry their extra weight in the abdomen region, but usually have relatively slim arms and legs. Men tend to be apple shaped, but many women are, too. Pear shaped individuals, by contrast, tend to carry fat in their lower body: hips, butt, and thighs.
Besides making our fat stores seem cuter by naming them after fruit (hehe), it's important to know which shape you are because it can help you determine your disease risk. It's has long been established that apple shapes are less health because excess fat storage around the abdomen is associated with a higher risk of heart disease. Pear shapes are often touted as less risky—healthy, even—especially when compared to abdominal fat storage.
I'm a pear shape and always figured that I wasn't at risk for health problems as a result. Even if I gained weight in the future, it would likely be in my hips and thighs. "No biggie," I thought. "Pear shapes are healthier, even when they're overweight." So I thought. I was really surprised when I read about a new study published in the July 14 issue of Journal of the American Geriatric Society that associated fat storage in the lower body with its own set of health risks.
Posted 9/3/2010 3:21:04 PM By: Nicole Nichols : 77 comments
What if I told you there is something you can drink that is easily accessible, free, healthy, and can help you lose more weight? Does it sound too good to be true? For years, people have speculated that this drink helps with weight loss. But until now there hasn’t been much scientific evidence to back up that claim. So what is it?
Posted 9/3/2010 10:12:31 AM By: Jen Mueller : 86 comments
The Slowest Loser has met his match: The Harshest Kitty.
One evening last month, our six-year-old daughter Annabelle ran into the house crying and shrieked: "There's a bear out there!"
Fortunately, the "bear" was actually a black cat. He meowed at us loudly, then scampered up the stairs, seemingly starved for food and affection. He rubbed against our legs, loved being petted, and jumped into my wife Tami's arms.
"This was definitely once a house cat," Tami said.
"I wonder where he came from," said Annabelle.
We put "Lost Cat" signs up in our neighborhood, fortunately to no avail. The cat won our hearts, and today, he's a Corwin.
We wanted to give him a name that referred to how he found us. I lobbied for Cici, standing for "Can I come in?" But we ultimately settled on "Blakely," an English name that means "from a dark meadow," which describes part of our backyard at night.
Little did I know that Blakely had an alter-ego – a nutrition expert known as The Harshest Kitty, pictured here plotting to eat my goldfish.
Posted 9/2/2010 5:28:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 207 comments
Many people have a love-hate relationship with the scale. We love it when it gives us numbers that appeal to use, hate it when it seems to be "stuck" or going in the wrong direction. But no matter how you feel about the scale, using it is a reality for most people who are trying to lose weight. Weighing in is a quick, easy, cheap and pretty accurate way to measure your progress compared to other methods, but the scale is just one option out there, since other measures (waist circumference, body fat percentage, how your jeans fit) matter, too.
Will just any scale do? These gadgets run the gamut when it comes to price, features and accuracy. You can find a basic model for $5 or $10 at a big box store, a mid-grade model that stores info and estimates your body fat percentage, or a pricier version that does all that and connects wirelessly to your computer to upload your data and show you progress reports. Then of course there's aesthetics. Some really sleek, modern scales appeal to a certain design-minded consumer, while others are just as happy with the "flamingo pink" scale they've had for 15 years.
When a sleek, modern scale with all the bells and whistles arrived on my desk to test out recently, it led me to wonder: Do you own a fancy scale with a lot of bells and whistles, or just a basic model?
Posted 8/27/2010 6:31:37 AM By: Nicole Nichols : 220 comments
"What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding?"
Written by Nick Lowe, this is the most poignant and chilling song title/lyric I know. It implies that the world is so out of whack and cynical that even suggesting that humans' noblest qualities could govern our world is a joke, and that anyone who makes such a suggestion is a New Age fruitcake.
True, it's a half-empty world view. The media gravitates to the negative. Billions of unreported acts of kindness are carried out every day worldwide, including on SparkPeople and The Slowest Loser SparkTeam, where everyone is mutually supportive. As author Max Ehrman wrote in his legendary 1927 self-help essay, Desiderata, "[T]he world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism."
Still, history shows that most nations' borders were established by war, not consensus, peace, love or understanding.
Therefore, self-destruction of the human race is conceivable. This was part of my rationale when I pondered ditching my weight loss journey due to the potential Mayan Apocalypse of 2012. I confess that Poll: Should I Just Give Up on Weight Loss? was tongue in cheek, as I've signaled by calling this The Slowest Loser Summer Fun Apocalypse Series (today's post is the third of three parts). But I learned important lessons about the staying power of food substitutions and a healthier diet by posing the question:
Posted 8/26/2010 5:37:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 105 comments
By Beth Donovan (~INDYGIRL)
Sometimes the difference in whether you gain or lose is how you see yourself. Sports trainers often use visualization to help athletes meet their goals by simply by having them imagine or see themselves as winners. What if we all stopped looking at ourselves as dieters and looked at ourselves as fit people? Would we still be so depressed about our situations that we would eat that extra helping? Or would we have a little more bounce in our step and park a bit farther away from our destination? Would we train for a 5K? The possibilities are endless if we don’t limit ourselves with a label of “unfit.”
Yes, so maybe we really are not at peak fitness, or anywhere in the vicinity. I personally am disabled and have more than another 100 pounds to goal, although I’ve lost 132 pounds to date. Part of how I lost weight though, was thinking of what I could do. Sure, there are plenty of things I can’t do, but there are also plenty of things I can.
Take a good look at yourself in your mind and consider yourself fit. You are fit. You are fit to do something about your situation. You are no longer a dieter. You are fit to make your own healthy choices and, if you desire, you can make the occasional indulgent one. The ball is in your court. It’s time to pick it up and play.
Posted 8/26/2010 5:22:31 AM By: dailySpark Guest Blogger : 112 comments
The head of public relations at an investment bank (who had a lot of explaining to do) once told me, "I've worked on Wall Street for nine years, and the only functioning emotion I have left is envy."
Last week, as I watched my fellow vacationers munch on pizza, ice cream cake and chicken cheese quesadillas while I made healthy food substitutions, I had two functioning emotions: jealousy and envy. So, as I explained last week in the inaugural Slowest Loser Summer Fun edition, I looked for a rationalization that would let me cancel my weight loss journey and eat as I pleased. I nominated the Mayan Apocalypse of 2012, explaining that the calendar of the ancient Mayan civilization in Latin America mysteriously ends on December 21, 2012. Many people interpret this to mean that that day will bring the end of the world. Others disagree.
I asked dailySpark readers whether I should adopt this apocalyptic scenario and use it as a reason to indiscriminately scarf down whatever I wish in the next 2+ years. So many people responded that I've decided to extend this topic into a three-part Slowest Loser Summer Fun Apocalypse series.
What did dailySpark readers tell me?
Posted 8/19/2010 5:00:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 157 comments
Welcome to The Slowest Loser Summer Fun Edition.
This week, I'm on vacation. I'm having a blast with my brother's family at the beach, especially my awesome brother Erik, who tells a great story.
I have only one problem. Everyone here is feasting on pizza, Oreo Cookie Blizzard ice cream cake and cheese quesadillas, while I'm still substituting whole grain bread for white rolls, light Swiss cheese for brie and water for lemon-lime soda, all in the name of The Slowest Loser quest to lose 35 pounds in 70 weeks. I'll have a bite of the unhealthy stuff here and there, but my heart isn't in it. I know that vacation is where some weight loss regimens go to die, and I'm in no mood for a three-pound setback. Either I'm gonna do this, or I'm not.
But the Not Option has never looked so tempting as it has on my fellow diners' plates at every meal. While leisurely surfing the web this week, I found a terrific rationalization to just call the whole thing off and eat whatever I want:
Posted 8/12/2010 6:32:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 201 comments
By Beth Donovan (~INDYGIRL)
Before SparkPeople, I used to have what I now call the "last supper mentality," as in swearing off a certain food and recommitting to a "diet" after one last hurrah, aka a binge. The last supper mentality is the difference between perfectionism and the middle ground where lifestyle really is.
So many times I used to say to myself:
"OK, this is the last piece of pizza I'm ever going to eat."
It never was.
"This is the last time I'm going off my diet until I get skinny."
It never was.
It never was the last anything. I would wake up the next morning, and Pizza Hut was still delivering, and chocolate was still as sweet and delicious as the day before.
Posted 8/12/2010 11:46:09 AM By: dailySpark Guest Blogger : 113 comments
Last weekend, I went to a Pennsylvania amusement park. By my reckoning, 60 percent of adults there were overweight, including The Slowest Loser, and 60 percent of the overweight people were also obese.
If that population was economically representative of US adults, one out of six of them were either unemployed and looking for work, underemployed, or unemployed and too discouraged to job hunt, and many were facing legitimate fears of foreclosure.
How did it come to that? Partially thanks to excessive risk and greed on Wall Street triggering a global economic crisis.
So I started musing on whether Wall Street excess and all those excess pounds (including mine) had anything to do with one another.
I looked for an answer in two books. One offered ample evidence that the Apocalypse is imminent. The other assured me that it's preventable.
Posted 8/5/2010 5:58:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 75 comments
I recently shared seven great tips that will help your healthy habits stick for the long haul and today I’ve got more good news for anyone who’s trying to win the battle of the bulge. What you’re doing right now—simply reading this blog—could be helping you win the weight-loss war. That’s right: A new study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that people who regularly logged on to a weight-loss website maintained their weight loss better than people who didn’t use the online support site.
Posted 8/4/2010 1:09:59 PM By: Nicole Nichols : 90 comments
In Week Seven of The Slowest Loser series, I wrote a post about how to use breathing to short-circuit eating impulses, noting that breath work has been integrally important to the mind-body-spirit connection for thousands of years. As I put it, "If you think breathing isn't important, try not breathing."
Given that, it's ironic that I recently found inspiration and insight on my own journey from an unlikely source: people who aren't breathing.
On the last of several days of the worst stress and conflict I'd experienced in months, I went for a jog on a crystal-clear Saturday. I usually get a burst to run up a steep hill, but that day, I had nothing in the tank. "Not today," I thought, and decided to walk instead. Soon, I came to a church. For some reason--nothing particularly morbid--I strayed into the cemetery behind it.
Boy, did it ever cheer me up.
I'll share an exercise this week that will hopefully cheer you up too. (Don't worry--it's not going to a cemetery.)
Posted 7/29/2010 7:07:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 115 comments
By Beth Donovan (~INDYGIRL)
Since I weighed 460 when I started my journey and I weigh 334 now, you can bet that I’ve had my fair share of plateaus. They are frustrating to say the least and sometimes are the one thing that can break your resolve to stay in a healthy lifestyle, even after months or years of successful fit living.
Personally, I blame the scale. It takes itself too seriously and convinces us that it is the only way to judge whether we are making progress. We want so badly to see those numbers go down. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience or not, but I can be having a perfectly “thin” day (where I feel good about myself and my body) and then I jump on the scale. If that number goes up even slightly, sometimes it’s like putting an anvil on my back. All the bounce goes out of my step and I feel sluggish, depressed, and as if I’ve failed. Sometimes I feel as if I should just give up.
Since SparkPeople has come into my life, I’ve learned that sometimes the scale goes up or stays the same because my body decides it is time to rest and adjust. I suspect my mind needs time to rest and adjust too. My mantra? Lose, maintain, but just don't gain. Gains do happen, but bodies are alive and changing by the minute. Haven’t you noticed that you weigh differently at different times of the day? Picking one consistent time and not weighing as often, for example weighing weekly or monthly, helps avoid the pitfalls of the body just doing its thing.
Posted 7/29/2010 6:01:32 AM By: dailySpark Guest Blogger : 104 comments
Most people realize that if a supplement's claims seem too good to be true, they probably are. "Lose 10 pounds in 2 days!" or "Look like this swimsuit model in less than a week!" are claims that make most of us roll our eyes and shake our heads. But for some reason, companies keep making diet pills and other supplements. What is that reason? Because they still make money. Even though we know they aren't likely to work, a lot of us are still spending big bucks in the hopes that diet pills will help us reach our goals more quickly and easily. Why?
Posted 7/23/2010 6:09:32 AM By: Jen Mueller : 91 comments
At SparkPeople, we try to prepare you for every culinary occasion. What you'll serve at holiday dinners, what you'll bring to picnics, what you'll eat to lose 20 pounds.
But what will you eat when you lose your mind? This week, we break our silence.
Posted 7/22/2010 11:32:00 PM By: Bruce Corwin : 172 comments
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