Belly fat or subcutaneous fat is a natural place for fat to be stored. It is easy to carry there and hard to get rid of because your body sees it as a great energy resource. But it isn’t just the fat that you see that is dangerous it’s the fat that exists around your organs behind your belly, the visceral fat that can cause great health risks like colon cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

What causes this type of fat?

One of the main culprits of belly fat is Trans fat, which is man made fat that is put into foods. This seems to be worse than any other type of fat for stretching your waist. Another problem is your sedentary lifestyle and your eating habits. Lack of sleep can also play a part in gaining weight since sleep deprivation cuts down on Leptin, which is a appetite suppressant.

How to get rid of belly fat.

Simply eating less, especially trans fat, is the easy answer. But to really be effective you must try to eat smaller meals each day, say 5 small meals instead of 3 big meals. And of course you must incorporate some kind of exercise program, walking is a great way to start.

Losing weight is more a mental exercise than anything else. We know, or we should know what to eat and we should know how much to eat. But why don’t we? Habits are hard to break. The habit of using food to make us feel better and the habit of eating when we have nothing else to do are habits that must be broken in order to lose weight.

Maybe it is 2 in the afternoon on Saturday, nothing is on TV and you have no plans to do anything, you decide that it is a good time to snack. Are you hungry? No, but you always have a snack around 2. That’s fine if the snack is fruit or any other healthy snack.

Unfortunately the snack may be chips, cookies or anything else that might be fattening. Why not the apple or low fat yogurt as a snack? Your mind just can’t get past the idea that junk food tastes better then fruit. A lifetime of bad decisions makes you reach for the cookies.

Can you change? Will the change be easy? You can change and with the right mindset you can eat properly. Two things that have to change, one that boredom is not a reason for eating and two healthy snacks can taste as good as junk food. You need to write a note to yourself and put it in a visible place in the kitchen saying that boredom is not a reason for eating. I know that sounds corny, but it is simple and it can remind you if you get a little forgetful.

As for the junk food, think exactly why you prefer junk food, it’s the sweet or fattening taste and the habit of eating them. Oranges and apples are sweet too; give them a try or any other fruit that you want. Remember it is a habit to eat junk food; it can be a habit to eat the right foods.

Tell yourself that you are going to try it for a week. Each day write down the snacks you ate and why you ate them. At the end of the week, look over what you have written. Eating healthy snacks makes sense and you really know that. The taste of healthy foods or snacks can be as enjoyable as junk food and you know that too.

Think about it and give healthy snacks a try.

The chocolate diet works on 2 premises, one that chocolate is a healthy food source that contains antioxidants that help with heart disease and high blood pressure. The other premise is that most people love chocolate and it would be very difficult if not impossible to eliminate chocolate from their diet. This all makes sense, but surely people with a sweet tooth and who want to really lose weight can find a substitute for chocolate. As for the miraculous powers of chocolate, I am also sure that there are other foods that are just as helpful.

One important note is that the chocolate that you consume will be through a chocolate diet shake, not candy bars.

The calories allowed on this diet are around 1000, which isn’t much, you better hope that the chocolate shakes either fill you up or slow down your metabolism. There isn’t really any proof of that.

As always, it is never a good idea for a diet to concentrate on one type of food, especially if that food is chocolate.

She wasn’t too upset when she found out that she only lost a pound. One pound is better than no pounds. The problem that she is going to face from here on out is to find the time to exercise which she didn’t do much of this week because of scheduling issues and her being sick. She knew this would be a problem because I don’t get home till late and she has to pick our son up from school, go home make dinner and help him with his homework. And on Tuesday he has to be at scouts and Wednesday it is choir practice. She isn’t complaining but she is just going to have to find some time to exercise.

One of the folks at Weight watchers told her to break up her exercising during the week. That is her plan and we will see how it goes.

The 3 day diet has been around since the mid 80’s. It promises quick weight loss up to 10 pounds although most of that weight will be water pounds. The proponents of this diet are quick to tell you not to go beyond three days with this diet. Eat your regular diet for 4 or 5 days before beginning another round of the 3 day diet.

The key to this diet is to make sure to exactly follow the diet, which in under 1000 calories a day. That’s not many calories. So after 3 days of it you will probably be very hungry and ready to pig out.

Here is the menu:
Day 1
Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
1/2 grapefruit or juice
1 piece toast with 1 tablespoon peanut butter
Lunch
1/2 cup tuna
1 piece toast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
Dinner
3 ounces any lean meat or chicken
1 cup green beans
1 cup carrots
1 apple
1 cup regular vanilla ice cream
Day 2
Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
1 egg
1/2 banana
1 piece toast
Lunch
1 cup cottage cheese or tuna
8 regular saltine crackers
Dinner
2 beef franks
1 cup broccoli or cabbage
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 banana
1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream
Day 3
Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
5 regular saltine crackers
1 ounce cheddar cheese
1 apple
Lunch
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
1 boiled egg
1 piece toast
Dinner
1 cup tuna
1 cup carrots
1 cup cauliflower
1 cup melon
1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

My wife has struggled with her weight all her life. She has tried many types of diets, fad diets, serious expensive diets like Jenny Craig and she has had success losing weight. Her problem like many others is that she gains it back. Just two years ago she had lost a good deal of weight with weight watchers. Her confidence was at an all time high and she was very excited about maintaining her weight. Unfortunately she had just started a new job, prior to the job she had stayed at home till my son was ready for kindergarten.
At first it was going good and she stayed on her diet and she keep the weight off, then slowly but surely as the stress level at work got worse she put the weight back on. She felt pretty bad about herself and the fact that she gained the weight back.

Anyway, she is going to give it another try. Weight watchers have changed some since she was on it last time. I don’t think that it had all the online tools on its website like it did before. It really looks pretty helpful.

I’ll keep you updated on her progress and she is doing.

 Our bodies produce a fat, a brown fat, that doesn’t store energy like the yellow or white fat, this fat helps burn energy. The function of brown fat is to mainly maintain body temperature. Interesting enough brown fat cells become more active in cold weather and that women more than men have this type of cells.

 Newborns have brown fat cells located on their back to help them to keep warm. Adults don’t have as much but they still have brown fat and it is located around the neck. The amount of brown fat may be less than a half ounce.

 What is important is the fact that brown fat cells may be the key to reducing weight and research is being done to find ways to produce brown fat cells.

 Dr. Lyons asserts that white or yellow fat can be replaced by the good brown fat through an exercise plan that he devised. He also has diet that includes fat in it.  Dr. Lyons exercise regimen emphasizes weight training as opposed to cardio training. He also advocates eating smaller meals, which a lot of diets advise today, and he encourages getting a lot of sleep.

Walter Voegtlin developed the diet in 1975. His theory behind the Caveman diet is that our ancient ancestors were a healthy lot who ate mostly meat that they hunted and very little carbohydrates. Voegtlin argued that we like our cave dwelling ancestors are carnivores who are supposed to eat meat and food that can be gathered. Examples of the gathered foods are herbs, fruits, nuts and vegetables. What can’t be gathered is spaghetti and bread, in other words no grain products were eaten in the Paleolithic time and you shouldn’t eat them either. And you can forget about diary products like cheese, milk, sugar and no ice cream. I am sure that there isn’t any cave wall etching of cavemen eating ice cream.

The diet does provide for a lot of protein with all the meat that is consumed. And it is an interesting idea that we as humans are somehow connected genetically with the diet of the caveman. Another argument for this diet is that our modern diets open us up to disease like cancer that the caveman didn’t have to worry about.

But all this goes against eating a sensible diet consisting of the 5 food groups. Any over abundance of one particular group of food can’t be that healthy for you.

But surprisingly there is a lot of support for this diet. Ultimately you (and your doctor) would have to decide whether it was right for you.

Was it always like this? Was there ever a time when you liked yourself, and you were happy with who you were and how you looked? No. it is the self esteem problem, right? You need to change that and it will take more than a quick weight loss diet or a regimen of exercises to make it happen. It takes time but it wouldn’t be hard if you try.

In order to lose the weight you need to remember one thing. It took you a long time to gain the weight (you may not think so but it did) and it may take some time to lose the weight. The worst thing that you can do is to set a timetable. Eating correctly and exercising on a regular basis are lifetime goals not something that you rush into so you will look good for the next high school reunion.

Losing weight
There are a lot of good diet programs that encourage eating a balanced meal and incorporating a exercise program that gradually gets more difficult as you go along. If you want to join them and feel that it would be beneficial that’s great. Just remember the best programs shot for weight losses of one pound a week and they have you eating lots of fruits and vegetables. They also promote exercise on a regular basis.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of programs that tell you that your weight will come off quickly by following their plan. They’ll show before and after pictures of happy customers to lose an enormous amount of weight in a short period. Stay away from those programs because if you lose the weight quickly you will gain it back just as fast.

Self esteem
This is a difficult thing to talk about because it is hard to define what self esteem is. Is it about what you do in life? Does your job define who you are? Or maybe that’s the problem you are down on your self because you are unhappy at your job and you wish that you could be doing something else. Or maybe it’s your appearance that makes your self esteem so low, you are overweight and you hate yourself for being that way. Or it might even be your relationships or lack of them that brings you down.
It could be many other things, but there is one common thread in all these reasons. It is your perception that generates the low self esteem.

It isn’t easy to change self esteem especially if you feel so badly about your life and who you are. But it can change! Slowly, but surely it can change.

Changing your perception
You might think that everything in your life is bad. You look bad, your job is bad, your relationships are bad and nothing will change that. Why is that because that is the way you have always felt about yourself.
The trick to changing all this is to take one problem at a time and slowly work on it. If you are overweight, slowly start to eat the right foods and slowly exercise. Walking is a great exercise to start with.
As the days turn into months you will find that you have indeed lost weight and you will have more energy than you have had in a long time. Sure there will be setbacks and lapses but remember eating the right foods and exercising are lifetime activities. You can always get back on track tomorrow.

The great thing about starting slow on any activity is the momentum that will allow you and encourage you to keep going. It is very powerful.