How to Lose Weight During the Holidays Without Losing FriendsWritten by Joey Dweck & The Editors at Weight Loss Buddy Press
It happens at every party: You swear that you’ll stick to your diet and you’re really sticking to your guns, popping crunchy baby carrots into your mouth like chocolate bon bons while everyone else is loading up on nachos and guacamole dip. Then someone – your mother who has been slaving over hot stove all day, your Uncle Mike who has polished off three martinis, your best friend Mary who has been trying to lose 25 pounds for last 25 years – steps up to your plate and fills it with an extra-large helping of guilt. “Come on, live a little. Just eat one piece,” your sister says as she tries to stuff stuffing in your face. “It’s your favorite, and I made it just for you. I’ll be hurt if you don’t at least try it.” And before you know it, you’re having your and everyone else’s cake and eating it, too. Family and friends, people you expect to support you, are very ones who are most likely to sabotage your diet, either consciously or subconsciously, and that’s why you need a neutral buddy to get you through not every wedding, birthday, bar mitzvah and holiday party, experts say. “When we sit down at table, we’re all sort of comparing how we shape up with other people there,” says Henrietta Harrison, a psychotherapist and life coach in Westport, Conn. “We’re all looking around table to see who looks older than last year, who looks thinner, who looks heavier.” And when people indulge, adds Laura Cipullo, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator with offices in Manhattan, New Jersey and upstate New York, “typically they want others to be ‘bad’ with them and indulge, too.” But as Cipullo and Harrison point out, just because you are offered piece of homemade pumpkin pie doesn’t mean that you have to eat whole thing. But it does mean that you can understand why you are being asked to eat it and then enlist your family and friends to help everyone beat their bad eating habits. “It can be threatening to a partner when other loses weight because thinner person will become more attractive to other people,” Harrison says. “When you lose weight, particularly if you are a woman, your confidence increases and it’s empowering. This can upset balance of power because as she gets more assertive, she becomes confident enough to change jobs, run for PTA or even go back to work.” By making your family and friends your buddies, everybody wins weight-loss game, Harrison and Cipullo say. “The buddy system is a good idea,” Cipullo says, “because entire family can be on same page. If mom and dad are eating a certain way or one child is eating a certain way, whole family should be eating that way – healthy.” Outside buddies, who provide encouragement and help 24/7, also can be part of your weight-loss network. “I recommend having someone to talk to before, during and after you go to these events,” Harrison says. “Buddying up during holidays is crucial for people who are alone because you get companionship. You get someone on your team. WeightLossBuddy.com is one way to do this. It is ideal for a lot of people because it’s like one-stop shopping.” Once you have a buddy, you can work together to change menu for future parties. “Make holidays less about food,” Cipullo says. “Meet for appetizers and drinks, not for formal sit-down dinners. Go ice skating or go for coffee or go out to a restaurant and choose your own food. Go out and look at holiday lights. Go for a manicure or a pedicure with your friends so you can sit around and chat and catch up.” And if your willpower does buckle under mistletoe, remind yourself that it doesn’t have to be feast or famine. “When you learn to ride a bike, you sometimes fall off,” Harrison says. “And when you learn, you don’t learn to ride in a straight line; you weave back and forth and that’s how diets should be.”
| | Weight Loss Diets with Negative Calorie FoodsWritten by www.NegativeCalorieFoods.com
You have permission to publish this article in your web sites, ezines or electronic publication, as long as it is used in its entirety including resource box (given at end of article), all HTML hyperlinks, references (clickable) and copyright information.Weight Loss Diets with Negative Calorie Foods Copyright 2004, www.negativecaloriefoods.com Negative calorie foods are said to use more calories to digest than calorie content of foods themselves, resulting in a negative calorie balance. It is therefore natural to consider a diet containing these foods for weight loss. A diet is a combination of a balanced selection of foods designed for medical or nutritional reasons. A good diet should include all major food groups. The weight loss diets (with or without negative calorie foods) are made to reduce body fat and weight. Some of popular weight loss diets are : Atkin's diet, cabbage soup diet, grapefruit diet, Hollywood diet, negative calorie foods diet, Pritikin diet,the South beach diet and zone diet. Most of weight loss diets promote to eat a particular food group and restrict other food groups. Such diets may show temporary results. If you follow these restricted diets for a long time, you may develop some health problems at later stage as these diets do not contain all necessary nutrients needed for your body. The secret to losing weight is to eat and drink right kind of foods until you are satisfied. Skipping of meals is not answer for weight loss, it can rather deteriorate your health. A healthy weight loss diet plan should include vegetables, fruits, grains, lentils and beans in your diet. Following is a sample daily diet plan that is good for keeping healthy weight and good health, irrespective of whether you follow a diet plan with negative calorie foods or not.
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