Idiot Proof Diet Blog

Here’s something I never heard before: a diet that works in the dark! According to an article I came across  on Newsday, a new diet trick is sweeping across Europe. Apparently, you should eat in the dark; i.e., blindfolded. It seems that not seeing your food enables you to eat a lot less than you normally do.

To Eat Blindfolded or Not…

Why the ‘blindfold diet’ works? Some say that because your sense of sight is limited, your other senses including your taste buds are heightened, ergo, you tend to focus more on your food intake and get to savor it more.

Personally, I think the above opinion only stresses the fact that you get to appreciate food more because you don’t literally see it and take it for granted. That reasoning - at least for me - does NOT explain why this would help you in your diet. But this does… could it be that by blindfolding yourself, you now cannot rely on your sense of sight to tell you that you’re full? Let me explain further…

Experts say that it takes about 20 mins for your stomach to produce the hormones that tell your brain your’re full. However, our sense of vision tells us something like this ‘unless that plate is empty, I’m NOT full!’

So by removing our sense of sight, we are FORCED to really pay attention to other ways our bodies tell us we’re full. What do you think? Well, research conducted way back in 2003 seems to agree to this.

According to Swedish study in 2003, subjects who ate while blindfolded ate 24% LESS food than their un-blindfolded counterparts.

I know eating blindfolded takes out a lot of the fun and enjoyment of eating food by why not give it a try? The Newsday article suggests trying it out at a dinner party. It will make for great conversation at least it suggests and I tend to agree.

At the very least, it would be fun to try for two reasons: (1) see if your guests can tell what they’re eating while blindfolded (a great test of who has the best taste buds!); and (2) you can verify if people do eat less or not while blindfolded!

Hello All. With the new year always comes promises to ourselves to live a better life. I’ve made that promise - and stuck to it! - many years so I hope that 2009mis YOUR year of making your health aspirations come true. After alll, it’s your body, and you’re the one who’s going to benefit from it most so what are you waiting for?

Just before I start this post, I was looking around for some news to share with you in the world of dieting and I came across this article about adopting a Mediterranean diet, published in the New York Times no less.

The article states that results of recent studies emphasize the benefits of adopting a Mediterranean diet, i.e., one where you consume a lot of nuts, green, leafy vegetables, and fish. Now, you may be thinking ‘hey, I already eat that’. Well, you see, it’s not about just making these items part of your diet but that you should SWITCH to such a diet.

This means that you should not eat processed foods anymore and simply go for these almost ‘direct from nature’ foods. So no more fast food joint stop overs, microwave dinners, and cookies and chips!

Now, I’ll be the last to say that you should NEVER touch these foods again because I’m a firm believer that if we tell ourselves that we are not allowed to eat this or that, something in our brains craves it even more! So, here’s what I did. I only buy ONE, say, frozen pizza and that stays in my freezer. And if I REALLY have no time or for some reason I eat that frozen pizza, then I’ll do so but that’s the one and only frozen pizza I’ll have the whole month or two.

The next thing most people worry about is how to know which foods belong to a Mediterranean diet. Here’s my BIG TIP for you and it’s been my simple guide since the day I adopted this type of eating lifestyle: if it comes from a can, I won’t eat it.

Go and consider that for one moment: if it comes from a can, don’t eat it.

If you look at your cupboard right now, you’ll probably realize that you won’t have anything to eat tomorrow if you get rid of all the canned goods you have there.

Yes, this means more cooking and preparing for you and you may worry now that you don’t have the time for it. But, really, if you don’t have the time or don’t want to make time for YOUR food, which nourishes YOUR body and makes sure it functions properly, who will?!?

Now, don’t make super drastic changes if you’re not 100% ready. Take things slowly. For instance, commit to NOT eat anything processed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Then step up your game the following week, and then the next. Take small steps so that your body - and mind - does not get a shock.

Once eating a Mediterranean diet comes more natural to you, now it’s time to up your exercise levels. And before you know it, you’ll look into a mirror and simply say “hi there, sexy!”

For many people, weight loss is all about minimizing the amount of stuff you take in. You could do that, but you could also lose weight the smart way by maximizing what you burn. Ramping up your body’s metabolism is another way for you to lose weight without resorting to faddy diets or meal plans. If you’re not sure how to tap into your body’s natural fat furnace, here are a few tips to get that fire burning.

Burn More with Breakfast

Skipping breakfast has become a common practice in today’s hectic, diet-crazed world. But experts say that missing out on Cap’n Crunch in the morning could be doing your body – and waistline – more harm than good.

Your body has two modes, a ‘sleep’ mode and an ‘active’ mode. It doesn’t, however, go from ‘sleep’ to ‘active’ automatically when you wake up. The initial dose of proteins and carbohydrates from you breakfast is what flicks your body clock switch. Without any breakfast, your body remains in the lower-metabolism ‘sleep’ mode, which results in less fat loss for all the activities you do in the morning.

Eat Less, More Frequently

Reducing portions is a typical component of any weight loss program. That’s only half of the battle against the belly, though. You should be cutting down on the calories you eat per meal, but at the same time eating those smaller meals more often throughout a day.

Food is converted to energy only as your body needs it; everything else is stored as fat, which is why you get plump when you eat too much. On the flipside, eating too little will tell your body to go into Starvation Mode, where it’ll metabolize as the least amount of food as possible because it thinks there’s a food shortage. That’s going to hurt your weight loss goals because it actually diminishes your fat-burning ability.

Eating small portions throughout the day will ensure that you get the amount of energy you need without leaving too much (if at all) to be converted into fat. You also keep your body from downsizing operations and utilizing less of the calories you consume.

Pile On the Reps!

Building muscles isn’t just for looking great in tight clothes. Muscles actually burn more calories per unit than most other tissues in your body, even when they’re at rest (i.e. you’re sitting down watching TV). Since this is a factor you can control, you might as well go to the gym and make the most out of it for burning that belly.

This doesn’t mean that you have to become a gym rat and aim to become the next Schwarzenegger. Just toning your muscles and getting a little definition would suffice. Pile on the reps – say 15 to 25 reps on 5- or 10-pound free weights – instead of rushing out to do 5 reps on the 100-pound barbells. This should get you the definition and metabolic boost that you’re after without your looking like a protein shake endorser.

Your body has a natural tendency and ability to burn fat on its own, which means that you don’t have to starve yourself to get results. You just have to know how to maximize your metabolism, and your body should take it from there.

There are several weight loss tips that are wildly popular but are unfortunately not based on any scientific theory. In fact research has time and again proven these tips to be completely false and yet they continue to be as popular as ever.

Here are a few of the most popular weight loss myths and the actual truth behind them:

Weight Loss Myth # 1- Fad Diets are the Only Answer to Rapid Weight Loss

Fad diets often work by cutting out certain types of food and you may well lose weight on these diets to start with. However, these diets are hard to follow and you may are likely to get tired of them soon enough and go back to your regular diet, putting your weight back on. If you want to not only lose weight but also keep the weight off, fad diets are not the answer.

Also, fad diets could actually be bad for you because your body does not get the nutrients it needs. Rapid weight loss can increase the risk of gallstones and if you are consuming under 800 calories a day you could risk potentially fatal abnormalities in heart rhythm.

Weight Loss Myth # 2- You Should Cut Out all Fast Foods from Your Diet

You can still eat fast foods when you are trying to lose weight, provided you are careful about your choice of foods as well as the portions. Choose smaller portions and avoid super size combos. Don’t drink soda but choose water or milk and select grilled foods and salads where possible. Salsa is healthier than cheese or sauce on tacos. Fried foods should only be eaten occasionally, and in small portions. Avoid high fat sauces and toppings such as dressings, mayonnaise or cheese.

Weight Loss Myth # 3- Dairy Products Are Bad For Anyone on a Diet

Dairy products contain many nutrients essential for good health including calcium for bone strength, and protein for correct muscle and organ function. Dietary guidelines state that you should consume three serves of dairy products per day. However, you can reduce your fat intake by selecting low fat or fat free options, which have the same nutritional value but with fewer calories.

Weight Loss Myth # 4 - Avoid Snacking During the Day

It doesn’t actually matter how many times a day you eat, it is your daily intake of calories that’s more important. When you feel like snacking, reaching out for a few carrot and cucumber sticks instead of a bag of crisps can make a world of a difference. It is in fact far better to have 4 or 5 “snacks” or smaller meals throughout the day rather than 2 or 3 larger meals.

Weight Loss Myth # 5 –Keep Away From All Desserts

Don’t deprive yourself – this is where many diets fail. Just a small portion of dessert is often enough to satisfy that sweet tooth. It’s okay to treat yourself, but be careful not to over-indulge. Maybe allow yourself something sweet once or twice per week. If you deprive yourself you might get carried away when you do have sweet foods. Make good choices, keep portions small, and be aware of overall calorie count, and you should be fine.

So now you know the truth behind these 5 diet myths. If you’ve been victim to these diet myths you know why it has been so difficult to lose that weight.

Happy Holidays Everyone! For some of you, the Holidays have been days of ‘letting go’ of your diet, for others, it’s been a struggle between good and evil! However, you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak.

Check out this great video featuring holiday fitness tips and enjoy the Holidays without the guilt (or heartburn).

Are you tired of trying out hundreds of different diet tips in your never ending quest to lose weight? The road to weight loss can be long and frustrating and is often strewn with endless diet tips; some of which work like magic whereas others are nothing but an exercise in futility. To make your weight loss journey a tad easier, we’ve compiled together some of the best diet tips ever and the good news is- each and every one of them works!

Diet Tip No. 1: Water is the Key to Weight Loss
By just replacing all soft drinks and sodas with water you will have cut back on a few hundred calories. Water is that magic ingredient that fills you up, flushes away the toxins from your body and is absolutely calorie-free. The minimum recommended amount is 8 glasses of water a day.

Diet Tip No. 2: Eat your Breakfast
In our absolute rush to get started with the day most of us have no time to sit down and have a wholesome, hearty breakfast and this could be a big mistake. Your breakfast sets the tone for the whole day. When you skip breakfast your body does not get the nutrition it requires, you feel tired easily and you could find your self reaching out for a calorie laden snack for an instant pick-me-up.

Diet Tip No. 3: Learn to Graze
It is far better to spread your daily calorie requirements over 4-5 smaller meals rather than just 1 -2 large meals a day. Eating smaller meals several times a day keeps your metabolism in high gear, which helps burn fat faster.

Diet Tip No. 4: Don’t Skimp on the Protein
Protein keeps you feeling sated longer as compared to fats or carbohydrates. Protein also promotes fat burning and helps maintain muscle mass. Some of the best protein sources include nuts, beans, cheese and yoghurt.

Diet Tip No. 5: Spice up your Foods
Foods that are bursting with flavor stimulate the taste buds and leave you feeling more satisfied. Stay away from easy to use sauces and flavorings that are high in calories. Using a variety of herbs and spices to flavor your foods will give you all the flavor your heart desires without adding any unnecessary calories.

Diet Tip No. 6: When Eating Out, Order Smaller Portions
Most servings at restaurants are larger than average and out of sheer habit most people eat up everything that is served. When eating out at restaurants, either order children’s portions or go with a buddy and share the entrée.

Diet Tip No.7: Avoid Midnight Snacking
You love watching late night movies and a bag of crisps of popcorn or a tub of ice cream goes just great with any movie. This is where most carefully laid diet plans go to waste. After spending the whole day counting every calorie, most people tend to let down their guard and relax at the end of the day. While relaxing is great and having a snack is not exactly a crime, you have to stay vigilant that you do not exceed your daily calorie requirement. If you must snack on something, choose something low calorie to munch on.

The best part of these 7 diet tips is that none of them require any herculean changes in your lifestyle. Instead, it’s the small changes that make a huge difference. Whether you try any one of these diet tips or you try them all, you can be sure to experience some measure of success in your weight loss journey.

Diet pills are often seen as the ‘easy way out’ if you want to lose weight, short of undergoing a liposuction. Such drugs, however, usually have a lot of limitations in terms of how much they can do and how much weight you can lose with them. A study on a new and still experimental diet drug is showing a lot of promise in extending those boundaries. You never know, this might just be your next diet pill.

The Lowdown on the New Diet Drug

NeuroSearch A/S, a Danish biopharmaceutical company, has been funding research into the diet pill potential of tesofensine. Once studied as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease, significant weight loss was observed in patients who took the drug. It currently has the status of an under-research drug for treating obesity.

Tesofensine works not on just one but on three pathways to help treat obesity. It increases the transmission of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that works on the accumbens (a part of the brain) to amplify the feeling of satisfaction that you get from eating. Noradrenaline and serotonin transmission are also increased simultaneously to affect the hypothalamus so that eating urges are reduced and the metabolism is increased, respectively.

Current diet drugs on the market typically reduce only up to 5 kg or 11 lbs in patients. Tesofensine, on the other hand, has shown potential to double that maximum weight loss. A Phase II study on tesofensine, the results of which were released earlier this year, showed as much as a shocking 28-lb reduction among the 208 individuals included. A Phase III study – mere steps away from submission to the FDA for approval – is slated for early 2009. But don’t get your hopes and calorie consumption up just yet.

Coming Not-So-Soon

Although the results of tesofensine are very promising and it looks like the drug could be out on the market as early as 2010, there’s a hitch in the game plan. The future of tesofensine – as with most other experimental diet drugs – is hazy because the FDA has recently tightened regulations and requirements on weight loss drugs. Even if the Phase III study is very successful, it’s unlikely that the drug will make it to US shores anytime soon.

It’s a very controversial season for weight loss drugs. American pharmaceutical Pfizer and French Sanofi-Aventis, two of the biggest players in the industry, have recently dropped R&D on CP-945,598 and Acomplia, their respective experimental diet pills. This was after the sudden stricture on health and safety regulations regarding weight loss pills on both sides of the Atlantic.

Health departments in both the United States and Britain are afraid that such diet drugs are causing adverse psychological side effects with all the neurotransmitter manipulation that they do. New, stricter regulations and a longer application process have hampered the efforts of pharmaceutical companies to get experimental drugs approved for sale on the market. It’s mot clear when this trend will get corrected and the path clears for the approval of tesofensine. Until then, though, it’s good old diet and exercise for you.

As you know, exercising is a MUST if you’re serious about weight loss. However, I too find it sometimes hard to find the time to go to the gym or go out for a 30-min walk or jog. The best option? Exercise at home!

Following is a great video to tighten your abs in just 5 mins in the comfort of your own living room. Just don’t forget to warm up a little (jumping jacks will do) before you do them ok?)

It covers two-thirds of the planet. It’s the universal solvent. It makes up about 70% of your body. What don’t people know about water nowadays? Many people aren’t aware that the unassuming drink can actually help you on your road to weight loss in many ways. Water for weight loss might sound like some hokey fad diet, but lots of scientific proof will say that the idea does, indeed, hold water (yeah, pun intended).

Water for Weight Loss?

Keep those eyebrows down because it’s actually a very effective, not to mention cheap, technique. There are a lot of reasons why you should drink enough water – about 8 to 10 glasses of the stuff per day – and proper hydration is at the top of the list. The weight loss is simply a happy side effect of keeping your body well supplied with H2O.

For one thing, it’s a great diet suppressant. One of the biggest problems with thirst is that it feels an awful lot like hunger, and it’s easy to mistake one for the other. Mistaking thirst for hunger, in particular, will have you chewing down an additional 500 calories or so, when the feeling could’ve been satiated by a simple 0-calorie glass of water.

Besides just satisfying a sensation, water also gives you a feeling of fullness. Sure, it’ll last just half an hour or so (it’s a liquid, so it gets absorbed much faster than solid food). But when you’re trying to stick to an eating plan or diet schedule, it’s a cheap, zero-cal way to make sure that you keep to the program.

You + H2O = Weight Loss

On the more scientific side of things, water keeps a lot of things in your body in balance. Your body naturally does osmoregulation – keeping tabs on the water being taken in and excreted out. When there’s not enough water in your system, your body goes into water-saving mode and diverts water away from ‘non-essential’ components and processes. Because a lot of those are metabolic processes, that’s bad news for your weight loss plan.

Your body – and your weight loss program – needs more water than you might think. Water is critical for digestion because it’s a necessary reactant in the metabolic reactions that break food down into simpler chemicals that your body can utilize for energy, or the ones that build new materials for your body to use. Without water, there’s a good chance that more of what you eat will be stored as fat because they can’t be used properly.

That’s why it’s important for you to meet your ‘water quota’ every day. A lot of processes in your body count on it, and it is likely that you will experience the negative effects if you don’t get enough water. Frequent headaches and constipation are just two of the unpleasant side effects of depriving yourself of water. With all the benefits that drinking water can give you, there’s really no reason for you to not get enough everyday.

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, is the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. The couple divorced shortly before the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Prior to that, Sarah Ferguson, or “Fergie” as she was called, was better known for displaying antics that were far from amusing to the Queen, although they gave the tabloids in both the UK as well as the United States quite a bit of copy.

In Debt and Overweight

After her divorce from Prince Andrew, with whom she has two daughters, the Duchess of York revealed that she was in debt. She was also overweight. One of the things that many people admired about her was the fact that she seemed to have natural survival instincts. And she proved it by combining her desire to lose weight with her desire to pay off her debt by becoming the celebrity spokesperson for Weight Watchers. She not only took off the weight, but she paved the way for other celebrity spokespeople, most of whom are women, to also gain revenue from endorsing weight loss programs.

Fergie and Weight Watchers

Instead of just losing the weight, getting the money and dumping Weight Watchers, Sarah Ferguson has continued to be their spokesperson and has been there to inspire other people to lose weight through this method. Weight Watchers is the oldest and probably best known weight loss system. It does not require the members to eat special foods but educates them on which foods are best to eat as well as exercises that they can do to lose weight. It is a common sense approach to weight loss. The purpose of the weekly meetings is to give inspiration to those who attend and also a sense of accountability. There is also a support network with this program. Members pay a small fee to join and a small amount of dues for each meeting, which is usually conducted by someone who was successful in losing weight and keeping the weight off.

Although Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, did bounce back and forth with some weight gain and then loss, she has managed to retain a much slimmer figure than she had at the height of her scandalous divorce from Prince Andrew, which was, at the time, the big scandal for the Royal Family. The divorce of Princess Diana and Prince Charles and the subsequent untimely and somewhat controversial death of Princess Diana quickly overshadowed the divorce of the Duke and Duchess of York.

In addition to her work for Weight Watchers, Sarah Ferguson has worked tirelessly in a campaign for children. She has managed to raise millions of dollars for charities such as the Ronald McDonald House, a charity set up by McDonald’s Corporation to aid families of children who are hospitalized away from home.

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, has gone from being tabloid fodder to a noted spokesperson for several well worth charities and causes. In addition to losing weight and getting herself out of debt, she has gone on to do some of the charitable work similar to the beloved late Princess Diana, who used her fame to draw attention to charities and other causes dear to her heart.