Healthy Weight Loss Programs

We continue talking about weight loss strategies from nutrition and health experts from Mayo Clinic.

Click here to read Think Yourself Thinner : Expert Advice From Mayo Clinic (part 1)

5) Make weight loss a game ~

and make sure you are the winner. Look at each day as a contest, and you chalk up a win if you do pretty well overall in a day.

6) Don’t eat in restaurants

Eating out is associated with weight gain. If time is an issue, find recipes that are easy to fix. If you do find yourself in a restaurant, skip appetizers and desserts, and eat slowly. As soon as you start to feel full, put the rest of the meal into a take out box for another meal later.

7) Keep records of your activity and eating

The goal of recording of what you plan to do, and what you really do (eating and exercising records) is to find out what is working for you and what is not. and discover the opportunities for change, says Kristin Vicker, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at the clinic.  ”Setbacks ad unmet goals are opportunities to learn. There’s no reason to be self-critical and ashamed when things don’t go your way.”

• Keep an activity journal that shows what type of activities you have done in a day and their intensity and duration. Include walking, gardening, stair climbing, any sports or/and workouts and all incidental activities.
• Step it up so you are walking or exercising for 60 min or more every day.
• Eat real food – mostly fresh, and healthy canned or frozen food. Stay away from most prepared or fast foods.
• Write out your daily goals and what motivates you each and every day.

Remember, we tend to be comfortable with our behaviors and habits, even if they are not always enjoyable or beneficial for our health. They are familiar. They give order and stability to our lives. But most people underestimate their ability to change. and changing behaviors in many small ways can add up to a big difference in lifestyle.

Tackle your barriers

There are so many reasons why it is impossible to eat healthfully or exercise every day. But they can all be overcome if you tackle them one at a time – with resolve.

Here’s How To Tackle Barriers To Healthy Weight

“If your experience is like that of many of my patients,” says Donals Hensrud, MD, an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, “you’ve probably tries at least several diets in attempt to lose weight, yet the weight keeps coming back. Well, welcome to The Mayo Clinic Diet – designed to be the last diet you’ve ever need. It is set up so you can lose 6 to 10 pounds in 2 weeks by reshaping your lifestyle and adding new healthy habits, breaking old habits and adopting (bonus) healthy lifestyle.”

FROM THE MAYO CLINIC DIET

Fueling Motivation

odds are you already have a pretty good idea of what you have to do to lose weight – eat less and move more. That’s the basic calorie equation of weight gain and weight loss. But if you are reading this, you probably haven’t done it.

Why?

It’s likely you haven’t found the necessary motivation. Knowing the how-to, eat this/don’t-eat-that aspect of weight loss is certainly important. But the most critical element is what you bring to the table – your own personal drive to succeed. To cultivate an ongoing, burning desire to succeed, here are 8 steps to launch your new healthy-eating lifestyle.

1) ask yourself, “Why do I want to lose weight?”

There may be several reasons. Improved health. More energy. Better beach body. Whatever.

Make a list of what’s important to you. Then, under each reason, write down specific reasons why it matters.

For example, lets say your top reason for losing weight is that your wedding is coming up and you don’t want to be embarrassed. Under that reason your more specific reasons may be “fit into that dream wedding dress of yours, the wedding gown you have purchased well in advance, 6 months ago” or “Not to feel like a blimp on a dance floor”. There are no wrong answers here – it is what matters to you.

2) Make yourself accountable

Establish weekly – or bi-weekly – weigh-ins. And get someone else involved – a friend, a co-worker or a family member. also, record your weekly weigh-ins in a journal.

3) Set new standards

Changing a habit can be challenging. changing a habit that has been going on for many years, which involves our emotional, social and psychological lives, is difficult. But change is possible.

Check out these lose weight tips – and take action! Work them into your daily routine.

4) Embrace change

“Change doesn’t have to be so drastic that you never try,” cautions Jennifer Nelson, RD, a clinical nutrition and health expert at the Mayo Clinic. Change your routine without losing who you are or what you like. But do break away from the same old thing.

Continue reading Think Yourself Thinner: Expert Advice From Mayo Clinic-2

What comes to your mind when you think of “diamonds”? Antique engagement rings? Modern diamond rings? Loose diamonds?

Diamond’s unique characteristics and extreme transparency to light makes it invaluable to industry and science. It lets a wide spectrum of light, from ultra-violet to infrared, pass through, unlike much glass, which is transparent to visible light only.

As more and more industries use diamonds, there was a drive to find new ways of making it. The high pressure method of growing individual crystals was laborious, and produced only relatively small diamonds. Research into a dramatically improved process began to gather momentum 20 years ago, which was to spell the future for synthetic diamond material. Known as chemical vapour deposition (CVD), it produces clouds of microscopic diamond crystals from carbon-containing gases such as methane. This mist of crystals can be used to drape solid objects like razoblades or drills in a hardwearing diamond coat. CVD diamonds are also not restricted to crystals, and can be grown in sheets or moulded shapes.

This new way of making diamonds opens limitless possibilities for diamonds use. Diamonds has a potential application in surgical treatments as due to their extreme durability and chemical resistance they can be used in the human body. In the future, CVD diamonds could be used to coat joint replacements in patients, to save them from being replaced after 15 years or so.

It is also predicted that before long we will have machines with diamond parts so small they can be injected into the bloodstream and programmed to monitor blood sugar levels in diabetics or clear a blocked artery. The problem with making moving parts for these “biosensors” out of almost any material is that the friction they experience, as they rub against one another, would soon wear away minute pieces entirely. Intense research is underway to find ways of making them from uniquely tough diamond.

Scientists are now even working to grow new nerves on diamonds. In 2002, one consortium of researchers in the United States embarked on an ambitious plan for visually impaired people suffering from diseases such as a retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration. They patched the damaged retinas with diamond-coated microchips. These take the place of the damaged rods and cones that normally convert light into electrical signals to send back to the brain, helping the person regain a degree of sight.

The ingenious and at present “extreme” uses of diamond touched on previously will affect all our lives in the future, from our technology to our health.