Creating a Weight-Loss Lifestyle

If you're looking into weight-loss programs, the best one is both the easiest and the hardest: Change your lifestyle.

"People should not go on a weight-loss program," says Keri M. Gans, RD, CDN, a nutrition consultant in New York City and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "They should develop healthy eating habits. The problem with a program is people feel they can go off at any time. If you instead change your lifestyle and how you approach food, then you're looking at a long-term plan for health."

The Best Weight-Loss Programs 

It all comes down to calories. If you eat 100 more food calories than you burn each day, you'll gain about a pound a month. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you slowly but surely will lose weight.

Figure out how many calories you should be taking in to maintain your current weight. The number can range from 1,600 calories a day for a sedentary older woman to 3,000 calories a day for an active young man.

Next, increase your physical activity to match or outburn the calories you take in every day. Also, plan your diet carefully to maximize nutrition while minimizing calories.

Lifestyle Obstacles to Weight Loss

Finally, begin your weight-loss program by carefully re-examining your life and recognizing some of the habits that can block weight loss. These include:

• Skipping meals. "Are you eating small, frequent meals throughout the day, or are you skipping meals and having long gaps between meals?" Gans asks. "That only makes you hungrier, and you'll tend to overeat at your next meal."
• Eating out without thought. "Do you dine out all the time and use that as an excuse not to make healthy choices at a restaurant?" Gans asks. "Even when you're dining out, you can make healthier choices. Order broiled food, not fried. Say no to desserts. Have a bowl of berries instead of pie. Order sauces on the side."
• Keeping unhealthy foods in your house. As part of a smart weight-loss program, you should clear out all the junk food and make sure you have a wealth of healthy options available for snacking and dining. "You need to keep fruit, vegetables, low-fat dairy in the house so it's there for you to make meals out of," Gans says. Simply limiting some foods, such as soft drinks, that are high in sugars may help you significantly reduce calories.
• Keep your portions small. One quick way to control weight is to cut back on the size of your portions. Many personal weight-loss programs fail because people ladle out way too much food for themselves and then feel compelled to clean their plates.

Make Smart Food Choices

Your food choices can also help determine the success of your weight-loss programs. Healthy and nutritious eating will include:

• Fruits and vegetables. "Low in calories and rich in nutrients, fruits and vegetables can build your meal and help fill you up," Gans says. Orange and dark-green vegetables contain some of the best nutrition around.
• Whole grains. At least half the grains you eat should be whole. They contain loads of fiber and will help you feel full.
• Low-fat milk and milk products. They fill you up and ensure you get enough calcium to stay healthy.
• Lean meats, poultry, and fish. Everyone needs protein, which satisfies hunger like no other food group. So choose lean meats, poultry, and fish and prepare them by baking, broiling, or grilling — no frying.

Last but not least, remember that lifestyle-based weight loss will occur more slowly than with fad diets, melting off only one or two pounds a month, Gans says. But because you've changed the way you eat, you'll be glad to hear that those pounds are far more likely to stay off.

? Does Stress cause Cancer

One could say, that of the main causes of death today is stress. People think it is cancer, or heart disease. But how do you think it gets started?  Stress is present in all areas of our lives, and we have become so used to it that we are even unaware of its constant presence in our lives.  Yet, stress invades our space when we are stuck in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam and the cars are not moving. We feel stress when we rush to catch the morning train because we left a little bit later than usual.

Stress attacks us with billboards advertising everywhere your eye turns, with blaring music and engine noises. We are invaded with pollution, we go to shops and our senses are blasted with stimulus to get us to spend our money, music, announcements, colours, and signs to read. Have you ever been on a holiday to a really quiet place? If you've been to a quiet place, it might have been at the beach or the mountain, or in the country, but it would have been a place where there is no television, no radio, no music of any sort, and the external stimulation was provided by natural sounds. This is getting increasingly more difficult to find, even your local café or restaurant is saturated with music, loud cappuccino machines and many TV sets.

The fact that conditions such as stress have a serious impact on immunity is no longer in question. Temporary stress, like studying for an exam, can completely wipe out the body's interferon levels, literally reducing them to 0. Interferon is necessary for certain cells of the immune system to do their jobs. For example, one kind of immune cells is a lymphocyte known as the natural killer cell. Natural killer cells have 2 functions. First, they patrol the body and seek out virus-infected cells for elimination. Second, they seek out and destroy cancer cells. In students, the stress of exam week often results in colds, cold sores or other minor illnesses, perhaps as a result of the poor natural killer cell activity brought about by low interferon levels.

In terms of long-term health, chronic stress is much more important than short-term stress. Walter Cannon first described the body's response to acute stress which he called the fight or flight response, in 1929. When we are faced with an emergency, there is a miraculous symphony that plays itself out flawlessly in the body. Adrenaline pours out of the adrenal glands, causing blood pressure to rise and the heart to beat more forcefully. At the same time, sugar is liberated from storage in the liver and pours into the bloodstream. This rapidly burning fuel is quickly delivered to our muscles, giving us uncommon strength. Adrenaline simultaneously improves visual acuity, short-term memory, and mental sharpness. We can make decisions fast and then act on them, we can survive. To learn more about how stress causes disease, read Cancer Free For Life.

If you have a scare in traffic, your body responds instantly. A minute later, calm prevails unless you decide to wallow in anger or frustration. Then stress can become chronic when we hang on to ancient anger for years. Research showed that chronic stress leads to enlarged adrenal glands and the thymus gland, the producer of T-lymphocytes used to fight cancer, is very small. Chronic stress leads to illness. When we are stressed the hypothalamus secretes a hormone which causes the adrenal glands to manufacture cortisol. In the long run, it is a suppressor of the immune system. It prevents the formation of new immune cells, and inhibits the activity of the ones already in the system.