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>>How to lose weight permanently – part 6

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 7

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 8

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 9

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How to lose weight permanently – part 9

January 26th, 2013 Milan

Losing weight permanently is a challenging goal to achieve. It’s the same as quitting smoking or drinking. It’s hard. That’s why, you need every little possible help you can get to get there.

Many achievement gurus will tell you to write your goals on the paper. Write them with big letters : I will loose weight permanently! And for the most part, they are right. You need to write your goals down so you have certain constant reminder always reminding you about this mission.

Written reminders about your goals don’t work

The problem however I find out in my own experience is that these papers with our goal reminders almost always get lost. Or you have them buried in your handbag or purse or wallet and they just sit there without you pulling them out. It’s hard to stop in your busy day, open your bag and look at your most pressing goals.

This is why I started creating art that reminds you about your health, fitness and performance goals. In this case, art supporting and reminding you about losing weight permanently. You get it, hang it on your empty walls, so you see it every day. It should be a provocative picture you are not going to miss. This art needs to be right on the edge of acceptable, so it’s hard to miss. It should be kind of offensive in some provocative funny way. It’s certainly not for everybody. Some people will hate me for this, but that’s ok. As long as I can help those few that are willing to take a risk with this kind of art.

Put weight loss supportive art on the walls

Several studies show, that by surrounding yourself with a wall art that reminds you and motivates you toward your goals, can support your goals and help you reach it. I believe in this. We need constant reminder of our goals. Otherwise we get of the track easily. Our attention span is very short. Reminders are a must, especially in the beginning of our mission, before our actions become automatic. And the reminders need to be very visible and provocative.

I always surround myself with a reminders and messages that support my goal. It is way better to have nice picture on the wall than just a piece of paper lying somewhere on the bottom of your bag.

You should do everything you can, that supports your goal. It’s your health after all. And that is the most important thing in the entire world.

I am going to create this kind of art in short future. So stay tuned! This is a revolutionary approach for reaching your goals. In this particular case – losing weight permanently.

I am not trying to sell you anything, I am just trying to tell you, that you can’t live without this kind of goal reaching provocative art. It is something that will support your health and weight loss. How powerful is that!

Provoking art as a constant reminder of your goal

Stay tuned and soon some provoking art appears on this site. It will be attractive, it could make you mad, you will probably get offended by it, you might hate me for that, but I am willing to take that risk in order for you to succeed. It doesn’t matter. Grab few pieces of a weight loss supporting art and put it on your walls.

Now, your chances of loosing it and keeping it off will be increasing. And you need every little help you can get. This is my own invention. And nobody is really doing anything like this. Forget your ego for a while. It’s ok to get offended by these art. And put these pictures on the walls once they are available. They are often offensive, provoking, but what if I tell you that they work?

Quite frankly, I am expecting to receive a Nobel price for this in the future But now seriously. Do you have any empty walls in your home that could use some esthetic, motivating, sometimes funny right on the edge art that supports your weight loss goals? If you do, get some of my pictures and put them on the walls. They will seriously help you on the road to achieving your weight loss goals. And feel free to return them with whole refund if you don’t loose any weight within a year. Which I really doubt. I strongly believe in you and these provoking pictures. Stay tuned for weight loss supporting, provoking art that will make you fantastically mad and it will push you to succeed!

How to lose weight permanently:

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 6

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 7

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 8

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How to lose weight permanently – part 8

January 24th, 2013 Milan

Strategies for better eating

Diet is crucially important to your success in losing weight permanently. And however complicated it might seem to really eat well, it’s quite simple. You can say it in one simple sentence: To lose weight permanently, stay away from processed foods loaded with flour and sugar, eat plenty of vegetables and fruits, have protein and some good fat in every meal you eat.

It is as simple as that. But putting it into a practice is not that simple, especially after a long period of time we spend developing a bad eating habits. And they will not be broken that easily. Again we talk here about habits. Yes, they are the cause of everything we are today. And some of them have been ingrained in us for very long time. So to brake them, we will need some time. And hopefully you recognized this principle and are already modifying your permanent weight loss habits.

I will remind you here again to just work on one habit for 30 days at the time. Make sure you stick to that one the whole 30 days. Than pick another one.

Bust your fridge and cupboards

We talked about this before. Take a large plastic bag and start putting all the candy bars, sodas, juices, breads, bagels, cookies, frozen meals, pizzas, chocolates, buns and everything that is made from flour and that has added sugar in it. Put it in the bag and throw it away! Don’t donate it! Throw it away! Nobody wants to eat this garbage! And if somebody really wants to, don’t give it to them anyway. You will do them a favor of not polluting their environment with more bad stuff in their life.

Your shopping list

Now, when your cupboards are empty and ready to be filled with good, weight loss supporting stuff, go shopping.

Buy these ingredients:

Nuts – almonds, walnuts

Fresh Eggs

Organic unsalted almond butter

Organic unsalted peanut butter

Seasonal fruit – apples, pears, peaches, oranges, plums, strawberries, raspberries and many other kinds

Avocados

Greens – mustard greens, kale, turnip leafs, spinach, even frozen is fine

Whole organic chicken

Lean ground turkey

First cold pressed virgin olive oil

Firm organic tofu

Green tea

Whole white yogurt

Whole milk

Can of sardines in spring water

Can of wild salmon

Can of lightly smoked herring in canola oil

100% dark chocolate

Whole cottage cheese

You can even hire me, since I am an official fridge buster. The title I gave myself about a year ago. I personally strongly believe that what we eat makes a huge impact on every aspect of our life’s. It is very important to consider every little piece of food we put into our mouth.

Always ask yourself these questions before you eat something. Can you find it in the nature as it is? And that’s the most important question. Of course you can cook it boil it or grill it. Important is, that what you are about to put into the pot is something you can find in nature like it is.

Some additional questions to ask are: Is there any sugar added it what i am about to eat? Is it made from flour? Is it made to last long on the shelf? If the answer to these questions is yes, you should really consider not eating it.

Our diet not only affects our weight, although that’s the number one reason we don’t like it is causing, it’s also affecting our brain, heart, all the vital organs and reproductive organs. Yes, I meant that, your sex life suffers as well. So improving it will not only help you loose weight and keep it off for ever, it will improve every aspect of your body. And the result will be leaner, healthier, better performing you.

Add fat to your diet

No, I am not crazy. And yes, you should increase amount of fat you consume daily. Why? Fat has a very important weight loss properties. First, by eating some of it with every meal will make you feel satisfied sooner and longer. That means you will not get hungry very soon and you will be feeling full longer. That kind of benefit of eating fat with every meal reduces your overall daily calorie consumption.

Second, when you eat fat with your meal, you automatically regulate sugar entry into your blood stream. Fat has an important role in our stomachs by slowing down the sugar, carbohydrate entry into your blood stream. With that it helps avoid the sugar and insulin spikes in your blood. And high insulin and sugar spikes are the worst enemy to the person trying to loose weight. Both of these factors, sugar spikes and high insulin levels in your blood stream are not only bad for your overall health, they make you fat too.

When there is too much sugar in your blood after eating something carbohydrate dense, lots of insulin is released to the blood stream. Of course your pancreas releases too much of it, because it doesn’t know how much is enough. Your pancreas didn’t have enough time to evolve to know this. It doesn’t recognize that bagel in your stomach, and all those empty carbohydrates from flour being released to your blood stream. So it panics and releases too much insulin. Now that insulin brakes those sugars into a glycogen, the human form of carbohydrate. And it tries to store it in your muscles and liver.

But, if these storages are already full, which they usually are especially with leading sedentary lifestyle, it stores it in your fat reserves. And that’s how you get fatter and fatter. So for this dangerous situation to avoid, I recommend two strategies. Eat only fruits and vegetables as your carbohydrates. And eat some fat with every meal to reduce the carbohydrate entry even further. This is the holly grail of fit lean body, sharp mind and lots of energy.

Saturated fat – the enemy?

Of course I am going to tell you, that the best sources of fat and the healthiest for you are those that are plant based. But don’t be surprised, if I am fine you eating and increasing saturated fat in your diet too. After all, all animal products like eggs, milk, cottage cheese and even virgin coconut milk contain saturated fat.

You heard that many, many times. Statements like: Don’t eat saturated fat. If you don’t want to get heart attack, stay away from saturated fat. Saturated fat clogs your arteries. Saturated fat is the worst enemy to your health.

Statements like this are very popular, but they are totally outdated. That is, why I never read men’s health or woman’s health magazines anymore. First, they are loaded with commercials. Second, the articles are short and don’t tell you much. And third, the message is so outdated and wrong. In every issue, they warn you to stay away from saturated fat! Yes, this message is very popular and quite frankly, everybody already knows it, but we read it again and again. We want assurance. It feels good to read something we already know. In this case, the dangers of saturated fat.

But, the message is wrong. Saturated fat is not bad for your health. It is not the reason your arteries are clogged, your blood pressure is high, you waist is huge and there is too much sugar flowing in your arteries making you pre diabetic. No, no, and no. Saturated fat is not the reason. The reason are the empty calories, you get from refined carbohydrates, sugar and yes too much beer and wine. To lose weight permanently, fat is important in our diet and it doesn’t really matter what kind is it as long as it is not trans fat. It needs to be naturally occurring fat.

Saturated fat is a very primal source of energy for us human beings. Saturated fat, is the reason we are still here, that we managed to survive. It’s the most primal source of energy for us.

Stop before you start binging on saturated fat

Now, I have a my own personal reason to tell you to cut on saturated fat in your diet. The reason are animals and the way humans treat them and the massive pollution, every farm raising cows and pigs produces. With eating too much of animal products, we let more animals to suffer and we are damaging our environment too.

No, that stake you had for dinner last night is not bad for your health. Like I said before, it’s loaded with protein and saturated fat. And those are our most natural sources of energy. But I am going to tell you to limit the consumption of meat to the minimum for the reasons I already described before.

I am personally trying not to eat any pork and beef. There are occasions, when I do, but I am trying to keep it on minimum. My choice of animal protein and fat is from poultry, fish, eggs and some dairy products. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make myself innocent in animal suffering (poultry suffers tremendously too and also fish) but I can’t resist it. I don’t eat these animal products more than 2 times per week, sometimes more, but that’s usually eggs and dairy products.

Meat is not bad for your health, but eat as little as you can or completely avoid it

Meat is totally natural for humans to consume. But I urge you to not over do it. Cut your meat consumption to minimum. Yes, there are many choices out there to replace the meat. And we will talk about them soon. For now, treat meat like a special treat. Don’t abuse it. Keep it on minimum. It can greatly benefit the animals and our environment and you too. It’s high in calories after all.

Best sources of fat for losing weight permanently:

Avocado

Olive oil

Nuts – all kinds of nuts, peanuts included Almond and peanut butters

Sunflower seeds

Pumpkin seeds

Canola oil

Coconut milk

Also, don’t be afraid of in moderation:

Organic butter

Lard

Vegetables and fruits as your only source of carbohydrates

Fruits and vegetables are naturally high in fiber and low in sugar. Yes, fruits taste sweet, but they actually are low in carbohydrates. And again, they come with fiber. Now we already talked about fats blood sugar entry slowing properties and the fiber has the same one. Fiber also naturally slows carbohydrate entry into the blood stream.

So now if you really think about it, you have 3 very powerful strategies to put your fat loss on autopilot. And if you can manage to utilize these strategies your body will become a fat burning machine.

So let me repeat them:

1st and 2nd – you will only eat fruits and vegetables as your only source of carbohydrates, which are naturally low in carbohydrates and on top of it, they contain a very beneficial fiber that comes with consuming them.

3rd – you add some fat with every meal you eat, further reducing the carbohydrate entry to the bloodstream.

Portion control is not that important

It is not important how much you eat, as long as you eat the way I described before. Binge if you like. Go for it. Just be very careful on what you binge. You can still overeat on regular basis and lose weight permanently. Quality maters much more than quantity. Happy healthy binging.

Best carbohydrate choices for losing weight permanently

Kale

Broccoli

Blueberries

Blackberries

Chickpeas

Celery

Cauliflower

Asparagus

Strawberries

Spinach

Lettuce – arugula, butter head, romaine

Mustard greens

Raspberries

Swiss chard

Kohlrabi

Peaches

Onions

Mushrooms

Leeks

Kidney beans – legumes are additional carbohydrates to fruits and vegetables for effective permanent weight loss

Grapes

Yellow squash

Cherries

Cucumbers

Tomatoes

Radishes

Green beans

Grapefruits

Fennel

Eggplant

Cabbage

Black beans

Bell peppers

Barley – together with steel cut oats, these grain choices can be introduced to your diet to support your permanent weight loss

Apples

Pears

Plums

Oranges

Okra

Oats – steel cut

Wine

Nectarines

Lentils

Kiwi

Brussels sprouts

Bok choy

Artichokes

Turnip greens

Apricot

These are carbohydrates rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals and are naturally low on sugar even though they taste sweet. They are great for our health and support our quest to lose weight permanently.

Best protein choices

Chicken breast or whole chicken

Turkey breast or ground turkey

Cod

Crab meat

Eggs

Lobster

Mackerel – fish

Milk – whole

Salmon

Sardines

Scallops

Sea bass – fish

Tuna

Cottage cheese – regular, not fat free

Shrimp

Soybean imitation meat products

Soy cheese

Tofu

Trout – fish

Yogurt – full fat

Soy milk

Soybeans boiled

How much protein should you eat at a meal? Just about what fits into your palm. That should be enough protein your body needs per day.

Simple recepies for losing weight permanently

Palm size of grilled salmon salmon, asparagus and 10 almonds

Palm size of chicken breast on top of the greens with 2 oz of olive oil

Mackerel in can with 2 apples

Sardines in olive oil can with 2 pears

Chicken thigh with steamed vegetables and olive oil

Ground turkey chilly with beans

Grilled tuna with steamed vegetables

Tofu, greens, spices and olive oil

Scrambled eggs with spinach and onion

Bean salad with mozzarella cheese

Apple with peanut butter

Pear with almond butter

Tofu over barley with olive oil and black pepper

And many many others. The simplest way to create a permanent weight loss meal is to take 1 choice of protein from the group of choices combine it with about the double size of it from one of the carbohydrate choices and add some of the fat choices to it. You will come up with a perfect permanent weight loss meal. If you can master this, you will be unstoppably on your way to lose weight permanently.

How to lose weight permanently:

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 6

>>How to lose weight permanently – part 7

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How to lose weight permanently – part 7

January 22nd, 2013 Milan

Getting your workout done without failure

Getting your exercise done for the day without failure is not only habit supporting your goal of losing weight permanently, but it is incredibly beneficial for your overall health. As the common saying you probably already heard goes: if you could pack the health benefits of regular exercise into one pill, it would be the best selling pill in the entire world. And people are desperately looking for a pill like this, since they have a lot of health problems.

The reality is that, it is impossible to pack benefits of exercise into one pill. That leaves us all, no matter how skinny or overweight, successful or less successful, rich or poor to have to get our regular exercise done if we want to stay healthy and lean.

Like I wrote before, if you are slightly overweight, and you have up to 20 extra pounds you could shed to get to your ideal healthy weight and you are physically active regularly, and those extra 20 pounds don’t bother you, than don’t stress about it. You are most likely very healthy and active person that works out on regular basis. You don’t have to stress about your weight. And you are probably also very attractive too.

I know women that are slightly overweight, they are incredibly active and at the same time they are attractive. Anyway, I just wanted to point to the importance of regular exercise for your health first. And little love handles don’t have to mean compromising on your attractiveness.

And of course physical exercise is important in losing weight permanently. With regular exercise, you build muscle, you increase your metabolism. And with combination of good diet, you loose weight faster and keep it off permanently.

So now, when you know how important regular exercise is for your health, body weight, self confidence, how do you make yourself to do it on regular basis?

Start with walking

The simplest way to introduce more physical activity to your life is to start walking regularly. If you are very sedentary person, this simple habit of walking every day for 20 minutes can have a huge impact on your body weight, overall health, and energy level. Walking is primal and very safe activity. It is available to anyone, at anytime and you can do it anywhere you wish to. Walking actually might be the healthiest and the most natural activity for us human beings. Along with some occasional interval sprinting, it can also become a great performance developing workout. Don’t start sprinting just yet to avoid injuries, especially if you haven’t been active lately. Start with regular walking first.

Developing the walking habit

I know you want it. I know you realize how important it is for you. I know how bad you feel about yourself if you don’t do it. And you still don’t do it. It’s hard. It is personal time sacrifice. You would rather do something else. That’s all understandable. Your other habits are so ingrained, that finding time and forcing yourself to walk for 20 minutes per day seems like impossible task.

But I have solution for you. Don’t wait to do your 20 minute walk until you get home. Ok, sometimes you will have to do it after your day is over and everything is done. Than instead of you watching your favorite show in TV, you have to go for a walk.

What if you don’t want to sacrifice your evenings? You don’t have to! I will show you how you can fit your 20 minute walk into your day and you won’t even recognize the time sacrifice.

Chunk it

You have certain morning routine. You get up, get the kids ready for school, drive them to the school, than maybe you stop in your favorite coffee shop on the way to work.

Now imagine this: You drop your kids at school. You drive to the shopping centre to get a coffee. Now instead of getting the coffee right away, spend 5-7 minutes walking around the grocery store before you get your coffee. Time it! Get your coffee, sit in the car and record it. Now when you arrive to your works parking lot, walk another 5-7 minutes before you go to work, holding your sugar free coffee and siping from it. Go ahead and, record it! Go to work.

Now look at your paper where you recorded your active walking time. Now it says that you already walked for 12 minutes and the day just started. Now let’s say, you want to take a little break from work at 10:30 AM and go to the corner store to buy a piece of fruit. Most companies don’t mind employees to take little brakes here and there throughout their working day. Now instead of going straight to the corner store, you choose the longer route. You circle around the block and around another block. Than you get your apple and return to work. Now you will add another 5 minutes to your sheet of exercise for the day.

You already build 17 minutes of active walking in your day. The matter of finishing last 3 minutes and possibly add extra time to your day of walking is just to do some extra walking on your lunch brake, after the work when you stop grocery shopping, or before you pick up your kids from the school.

You can get creative here and add extra walking anytime whenever you can. This way, you not only get your walking exercise done for the day, you will use your time better. You can always utilize the little time windows for your exercise. Chunking is totally fine.

The misleading picture many people have ingrained in their heads about exercise is that it needs to be scheduled and you need to mentally focus on it. I used to be like that. Nothing is further from truth. Exercise doesn’t have to start with changing clothes, putting on the athletic shoes, meditating before and end with the cool down and cold shower. Who has time for that?

Chunking works

The way to make chunking your exercise work for you, in this case walking in your day is to keep it in mind or keep it written on paper. Write, what you want to accomplish for that day exercise wise. In this case it’s 20 minutes of walking. And than, when the opportunity comes, like the little time you have before grocery shopping, you do it! You complete your little chunk of walking for 5 minutes. And you add it up.

You’ll build over time a certain mindset, that exercise can be done in little chunks over the day. The result of this kind of mind set will be less failure to exercise, making you feel better about yourself, you add extra activity into your day, you will still have your evenings free if you choose to and you will be on your way to get into a habit of moving/exercising regularly. Quite a powerful habit to develop. It’s life changing!

Work out while you are working

The best way to get your exercise done is when you work. Not everybody is lucky to have this option, but if you do, take it! It doesn’t really have to be a full gym provided by employer. Possible brakes and atmosphere at the workplace, when nobody is always looking over your shoulder what you are doing is great. You can do a lot in these breaks for yourself.

I am not promoting any non working activities here while you are on the clock. No, you should concentrate on your job and do whatever you can to do for the company you work for. They are paying you after all. But, a company that doesn’t allow their employees to have active brakes, long active brakes and closely watches them to be more productive and squeezing the employees to the maximum is not a good company to work for. And you should quit as soon as you can if this describes your employer.

You say, it’s bad economy! I am lucky to have a job. That’s pile of steaming horse shit! And your boss knows it. They need you. You are the one that makes them rich! Every employer needs to realize, and lots of them do, that active brakes improve productivity and loyalty of employees. Active brakes create healthier, stronger, more creative employees. Every company should have a certain fitness program or at least long active brakes for they employees.

I personally would always get my workout done at work. And this applies to the times that I didn’t work in health club as a personal trainer. I used to work for a small architectural firm, where I would get my 5 sets of push ups, pull ups and squat jumps done every second day. Than I would stretch a lot in my brakes. Yes, I would still go to the gym in the afternoon to lift some heavy weights, or run on racetrack or play some tennis. But, even if I didn’t, huge part of my workout was already done. And I want the same for you. It’s really possible to pull this off with some focus and planing.

I will give you few tips, how you can get your workout done at work, so in the afternoon, you don’t have to run to the gym drained from energy.

Examples of work workouts

Climb stairs at work. If you work in a building that has several floors, the building has certainly nice long staircase. It’s probably hidden somewhere in the back of the building and nobody knows about it. Because everybody is of course using elevator.

Now let’s say you work on the second floor in 4 flights tall building. Come to work and take elevator to your floor. Sit at the desk and write down what you are going to accomplish. If you are a beginner and just starting write down 3×4 floors. That means you will climb that staircase 3 times today all the way to the 4th floor.

Now you do some work, and in half an hour, good opportunity for a 10 minute breaks arrives. Instead or checking the Oprah website, stand up from your desk. Go straight to the staircase and step down to the ground floor. As soon as you come down, start climbing up. You don’t have to go fast. Just get to the 4th floor and than step down back to the 2nd floor back to your workstation. And get back to the work. If you did this, you are most likely feeling great, blood is flowing intensively in you veins. You are completely awake.

After you did your first climb of stairs wait for the next opportunity to do your second and third climb. This way, your workout will be done. Your workout will be done with your work together. You most likely felt great at work and got more work done at the same time. You leave work, you don’t have to go to the gym, or do any other exercise anymore. You are done with your exercise for the day. You can enjoy your evening however you like. No need to go to a stinky, dusty, boring gym.

Use every opportunity to move

If your work doesn’t give you much room for active brakes and you are stuck at your desk, use every opportunity to move. Can you stand at your desk? Call your company IT to get you the longer cables or to set up your work station standing freely. Do some squats and whenever you have a minute, walk intensively around the office. Use every opportunity to move.

Even the busiest job positions out there have little windows, that can be used for some physical movement.

Long walks

Can you eat your lunch or part of it before or after your lunch brake? Than do it! And use your lunch brake for a long walk. Eating a piece of chicken breast with some apple doesn’t take that long and you can have some of it before your lunch brake starts. The key here is planing and preparation. But if you plan well, you can use your lunch brake as your work out brake. Just because it says lunch brake, it doesn’t mean, you have to sit with your coworkers in office cafeteria, nearby restaurant or fast food joint. Lunch brake in my world means move a lot brake.

Strength training at work

If you are not one of the lucky ones to whom employer provides fitness centre on the job site, don’t despair. You can always bring pair of free weights to your work too. You don’t really need the whole fitness center. While for beginner exercisers, the best choice is to start with walking, if they have more time and will, they can introduce some light weight training too. Just few simple exercises are fine to add to your mainly walking routine. Also, here you can utilize short brakes at work to perform a set of exercise.

You will not sweat, don’t worry. And it shouldn’t feel too hard. The benefit to you and your employer will be: your overall energy level increases, better productivity, more movement in your day, increased metabolism and permanent weight loss. So if you are interested in doing some strength training exercises at work or at homes office, check my office workouts.

Physical chores

Any kind of extra physical chore you do in your day will help you lose weight permanently. It burns calories, increases metabolism and it is great for your health. Activities like gardening, cleaning, grocery shopping, sweeping, lawn moving, wood pecking and many others are great additional physical movements in your day. I said additional. What do I mean by that? I simply mean, that you shouldn’t substitute these activities for your scheduled 20 minutes walking every day. You need to always get your walking for the day done. What you do extra will be great, but don’t skip your walking. Even if you spent the whole day gardening. Stick to your walking schedule!

Stay positive

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Losing weight permanently is not easy. Don’t get down on yourself if for some reason you skip your walking routine and eat bad food. We, all human beings are a work in progress. Non of us is perfect. We make mistakes every day and we make bad choices every day. That’s here to stay. You are not an exception. The important thing is, that you are sticking with it and not quitting. And you want to improve every day. In these case, changing your habits over long term and eventually achieving your desired body weight.

If you over time keep changing your habits and doing little progress you will get to your desired destination sooner or later. Just imagine a wood pecker. He needs to do hundreds or thousands of axe peck to bring the large tree down. With each peck, he is getting closer to having that tree down and sooner or later, if he didn’t quit, the tree will certainly be down. Even if he did only 3 peck per day, the tree will be cut within a year. Thing about your permanent weight loss exactly the same way.

A year has 365 days and you only need to improve just a little bit every day to see a huge improvement over the year. So, the most important is to keep pecking and not quitting.

This is actually the secret of all successful people. They just know, that they are not going to improve in one week or month, whatever they do. So if they don’t see much of the change in their improvement they don’t stress about it. They keep going. And eventually the big change arrives.

I want you too, to instill this kind of mentality into your head and use it in your own quest to lose weight permanently. Strive to improve just a little bit every day. Do few simple action steps. Do your best and than don’t worry about the rest. Relax. Stay positive. Give yourself a credit. Reward yourself with some dark chocolate. Tomorrow is another day. Losing weight permanently is not easy, but is as simple as that.

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How to lose weight permanently – part 6

January 18th, 2013 Milan

If you want to lose weight permanently, paying attention to your daily habits is very important. So lets talk more about our daily habits and how to successfully improve them over time, so they support your weight lose and you succeed. You know, that this is the time you are going to make it. You already know a lot about losing weight. It is all about the habits that are often very deeply ingrained in our minds. You also got little bit scared by my previous article about what people can expect to face down the road if they don’t manage to improve their lifestyle and loose weight permanently. And you are on your way to succeed in losing weight permanently.

Changing habits without changing a structure of habit

I will show you now some concrete examples of switching the most common habits from bad non supportive to your weight loss to good ones, supportive ones. The goal here is to not delete the habit completely, but improve it. The habit will stay there, but it will become a healthy, weight loss supportive one.

For example our typical morning visit to the coffee shop. Instead of having your favorite Danish, you will buy unsweetened yogurt with fresh fruits on it. If the problem you have with this is, that that yogurt is more expensive than that Danish, get over it. There is a reason why it is so.

Yogurt with fresh fruits is loaded with nutrients and it’s good for your health. Compare it to the Danish or cookie you usually had. They are mass produced cheap calories. And you are getting more ripped of by buying those than buying real foods. If price is the problem, buy your white yogurt and berries in your local grocery store.

But, we are here trying to keep your old habit, while improving it. And that habit is – going to the coffee shop every morning and getting your coffee and food. Than, have your coffee or late without sugar in it. Have it just like they serve it to you. You can put some milk or cream in it. And that’s it. The habit stayed there, you still go to the coffee shop, you smell the fresh smell of roasted, blended coffee, but what you are getting there is not garbage foods. Now, you are getting some real stuff. Overpriced, but real.

Don’t worry about the price right now. Loosing weight, improving your health and energy levels are priceless.

I will show you next few extra examples of switching habits from unsupportive to supportive without changing the structure.

Ice cream for home made smoothies

Who doesn’t like ice cream! I personally love ice cream. And it is actually not that bad for you. Since beside a lot of sugar and lots of fat, it also contains protein. But, if you are serious abut loosing your weight, you need to change ice cream habit. The problem is not really to have a lot of ice cream occasionally.

The big problem is, that ice cream habit means having a little bit every evening after dinner regularly. And I know a lot of people and I was one of them that did this. They have religiously their two scoops of cherry Garcia ice cream every evening. This way, they put huge extra amounts of sugar into their body over long periods of time. And that beside a dangers of sugar means extra calories and weight gain over time.

I am not going to discuss the possibility of having sugar free ice cream as an option here. The stuff they put into these kind of ice creams to make it sweet tasting is a dangerous chemical in my world. And there are not enough studies done yet to dismiss it’s dangerous effects on our body. And I have a feeling, that they will come out soon. So please stay away from sugar free ice cream. Plus plastic sugar makes you crave sweet stuff even more. That’s already proven.

So how do you switch this habit?

Remember, the structure must stay the same. You will have something sweet creamy tasting after the dinner. But it won’t be ice cream. It will be blended smoothie made from unsweetened frozen berries, some banana, milk and maybe some coconut milk. All ingredients are naturally free of added sugar. They taste sweet, but the sugar is naturally occurring in berries and bananas, plus there is only about one third of sugar and much less than amount of sugar in the ice cream. And it’s simple to make. The key is to have the right ingredients ready.

Next time you go to the grocery store, buy some frozen berries – strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, if they have it buy also some frozen mangoes and other fruit. Get also some milk, fresh bananas, and unsweetened coconut milk. It is ok to buy a whole milk and use whole coconut milk. The fat is not a problem in your diet, sugar is. And fat can actually help you loose fat. We will talk about that later.

Now make sure, you have all the ingredients ready at home and when the ice cream time comes, pull them out, put them into a blender and make a delicious, weight loss supporting, health promoting smoothie.

Here is a more detailed description how to make these ice cream substituting smoothies. Enjoy! They are delicious!

Crackers and chips for nuts and fruit

Crackers are not good for you. Even those claiming that are made of whole grains. They often say – guilt reduced crackers or something like that so you don’t feel bad eating them. Same with any kind of chips. They are high on trans fats. Yes, any kind of commercially made cracker of chip, even if it claims to be healthy for you, contains besides lots of empty carbohydrates, lots of fat and trans fats. And this commercially made stuff make us fat and very unhealthy by causing inflammation in our body.

The biggest problem with chips and crackers is, that once we start eating them, we cannot stop. We have few, than we have a sip of coke or beer and than we have few more. And sooner we know it, the bag is empty. And few beers or cokes are gone with it.

Did you ever realize, that when you start eating chips or crackers, they only taste great in the beginning? After about 5 or 7 pieces, they don’t taste that great like before. Your taste buds are satisfied with first few crackers, than it just begins to be something to do with your hands and mouth while staring into the box. You keep eating them, because you want to keep your mouth and arms comfortably busy. And you end up eating a lot of them.

Subsequently, your sleep suffers by all those chemicals and preservatives and empty carbohydrates you put into your body. And on top of that, you consumed huge amount of empty calories, so your body weight can keep growing over time. Not, exactly the thing you are looking for.

Losing weight, empty carbohydrates and growth hormone

Overloading your body with carbohydrates in the evening has another negative effect on you weight and overall health. When you eat too much empty carbs in the evening and go to sleep, you are automatically stumping the natural healing mechanism of your body – growth hormone release.

Growth hormone releases naturally when we sleep. It’s responsible for a repair of our body and for healthy maintenance of muscle mass. And Guess what? It’s release is closely connected to healthy body weight. When you eat too much carbohydrates before you go to bed, your blood sugar raises, insulin is released and it literally plugs the Human Growth Hormone canal by it’s inflammatory effect. And let me just tell you that, if you are trying to lose weight permanently, you can’t afford that.

Lose weight permanently with this habit change and use it as an example for other habits

So what is the crackers/chips solution? The solution is in the trick. Take a little plate and put 7 pieces of crackers on it. Have various fruits ready and some nuts. It’s ok if they are salted for now. Now mix those seven pieces of crackers with handful of nuts and keep it on the plate. On another plate, put 1 apple, 1 orange and 1 peach. Or whatever you have. Having 3 apples on the plate is fine if you don’t have other variety of fruits. Brew some caffeine free herbal tea.

Now take those two plates and put them on the table where you usually sit. It’s most often the coffee table in front of tv and your sofa. Now, don’t sit down yet on your comfortable sofa. Go back to the kitchen, take the biggest glass you have and pour hot freshly brewed herbal tea in it. Take it to the living room and put it on your coffee table right next to your heathy snacks. Now sit down.

You have snacks in front of you and they are healthy, nutritious and free of aded sugar and flour. And you are going to snack on them. And don’t get offended now, but your own laziness will not let you get up for a bad refill of chips or crackers. If you are ambitious enough and you finished all your snacks in front of you and you actually got up for refill, make sure, you have extra fruits and nuts ready for snacking. The key is to grab the good, healthy, nutritious snacks.

Don’t worry about quantity for now, just eat as much as you like of these good stuff. But quality is crucially important. And preparation is a must. You always want to have nuts, fruit and herbal tea ready. With this kind of change, you still keep your mouth and hands busy by taking only 7 chips, eating nuts, fruits and sipping unsweetened herbal tea. But you will be putting mainly the good heathy stuff into your body.

And your natural Human Growth Hormone production won’t be stumped.

Sweets for fruits

Sweets are dangerous! I am not exaggerating. They really are. And you need to get them out of you life. Period!

Not only you are gaining weight by eating them, you are exposing yourself into other dangers like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Several recent studies show, that cancer actually feeds on sugar and spreads faster by being fertilized by it and that dementia and Alzheimer’s are high blood sugar related diseases. You already read about it in my previous article.

So it is crucially important to brake the habit of eating sweets in your life. How do you do that? First, you look all around your house, fridge, cupboards and drawers. Collect all the sweet stuff you find and throw it away. Don’t donate it! Why would you donate this poison? For somebody else to eat it? To a child? Nobody wants their kids to eat this garbage. Just throw it away without any guilt.

I personally would rather eat death spiders if I was starving to death, than eat a candy bar. So now, when your house is all cleared of the sweets, promise yourself you will not buy any other sweets anymore. Good.

Next time you go to the grocery store, buy a lot of fresh colorful, sweet fresh fruits. And also vegetables. And when you are having a sweet tooth, just grab one of these fresh fruits instead. I frequently eat the whole pound of fresh figs, strawberries or raspberries when I feel like having something sweet. They taste sweet, they have lots of fiber and they are good for you. They satisfy and fill you up. It’s quite a powerful habit to develop. It will serve you your whole life. Less sugar means, better and healthier life!

To lose weight permanently you don’t have to brake a bad habit completely, you can just switch a structure of this habit. Yes, you need to use your knowledge and intelligence, but you already know that almond is better for you than potato chip. Happy modifying and losing.

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How to lose weight permanently – part 5

January 16th, 2013 Milan

I am by nature very positive person. I usually talk and enjoy talking and writing about good positive stuff that elevates mood. But if I can scare you just a little bit to take positive action it’s worth it. So I decided, that I will.

There is a lot of scary stuff about being overweight. And I will start with the scariest. And I hope I will motivate you by them. My intention is not to scare you only, my intention is to scare you and motivate you into action. It really works for me. That’s why I try to apply this principle to other people trying to change and lose weight permanently.

I personally get really motivated by finding out about certain scary situation I am putting myself in and eliminating it. I actually get motivated by this a lot. One of the recent example I got really scared of, that motivated me to change my habit was finding out, that some latest studies showed, that Alzheimer’s disease is form of diabetes and it’s caused by sugar consumption. Also I read a study that cancer feeds on sugar. This made me very motivated to eliminate every possible extra sugar and white flour in my diet. It made me quit my evening occasional ice cream habit and replacing it with healthy natural smoothie. So let’s get to few very scary examples that will hopefully motivate you:

Amputated legs

Many legs get amputated in the world every year. U.S. Is the leading country in leg amputation. What is the reason for these amputations. It’s a lack of circulation of blood caused by diabetes. And the main cause is type 2 diabetes. And type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. Majority of type 2 diabetic people are overweight, inactive, very sedentary types.

Of course, there is type 1 diabetes that’s dangerous too and that’s the kind we are born with or we get in spite of leading healthy lifestyle. Bud by far the majority of the cases are the type 2 diabetes people who get their leg amputated.

The interesting thing is, that the type 2 diabetes is very successfully reversible by change in the lifestyle. When pre diabetic or diabetic person starts regular exercise regiment and introduces heathy diet and subsequently drops the weight, his sugar levels decline, insulin resistance disappears and type 2 diabetes is gone.

My questions to you are: Are you overweight? Are you inactive? Did you go to the doctors office and he told you, that you have higher blood sugar levels than you should? Are you pre diabetic or are you already diabetic? If yes is the answer to only one of these questions and you don’t change, your chances of your leg being amputated at some point in your life rises exponentially. And that is a pretty scary outlook to the future. I would trade to keep my both legs for healthy lifestyle anytime! 3 apples instead of 3 doughnuts anybody? Not sweet and tasty enough for you? You better get use to it fast. Doughnut like foods are slowly killing you from inside. It’s time to eliminate them.

Heart attacks

Forget the amputated leg you might be facing when you are overweight. What if you just get a massive heart attack on the way to work tomorrow and you die on the spot? Or maybe you don’t die and will be rescued, but you will face the consequences for the rest of your life? Yes, that can actually happen and your probability of that to happen raises exponentially if you are overweight, don’t exercise regularly and eat poorly.

But, if you change that and you loose weight, start exercising regularly and start eating better, the chances of dying of heart attack almost completely disappear. Well, if that doesn’t motivate you to start right now, I don’t know what will.

Cancer

Being overweight, inactive and eating poor diet magnifies your chances of being diagnosed with many kinds of scary cancers. And we all know somebody close to us who is or was battling this carry disease. The life of a cancer patient is a true misery, pain and incredible suffering. Can you imagine your doctor telling you to get ready to die? That there is no hope for you anymore?

It’s really, really bad and often we forget and don’t realize how bad it is before we become one of those patients. How about doing everything, lovering the chances to a minimum and don’t give the cancer a change? With lifestyle, you can do it. And you should. Otherwise, you are playing with dangerous fire. Losing weight permanently is one of those magnificent action toward cancer prevention.

Dementia

When we get inactive, overweight and eat diet full of processed foods loaded with sugar, flour, our arteries suffer. They are literary on fire from the inflammation happening there that is caused by our lifestyle. But, there are not only heart, intestines and all organs in our body that rely on healthy cardiovascular system. Your most important organ – brain suffers too.

Our brain is the center tower in our body. Everything starts in our brain. And for it to function well, the clear and plentiful oxygen and nutrient supply that comes through brain arteries is necessary.

When we are overweight, sedentary and our diet is terrible our brain suffers. It’s not working well, we forget stuff, we are tired very easily and we put ourself in danger of stroke, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Have you seen a person after he survived stroke? Than you know what I am talking about. These people, who survive stroke are relied on other people for the rest of their life’s. it’s completely appropriate to be scared and afraid of this condition.

With a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle, permanent inflammation in your brain arteries sets in, slowing you down mentally and setting the time bomb that’s about to explode anytime. A lot of it is not understood yet. Bet am pretty sure that too much sugar washing your brain everyday is a huge part of the problem. Believe me and do something about that!

It’s your choice

Decrease your chances of suffering by these scary conditions by improving your lifestyle and loosing weight permanently. Ok, now enough of the scary stuff. It makes me sad, just to thing about it and scared at the same time. I don’t know how about you, but if something was out of whack in my life like me being inactive, consuming terrible diet and being overweight, I would really get motivated by these examples. How about you? Time to take action!

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How to lose weight permanently – part 4

January 12th, 2013 Milan

To lose weight permanently, you need to change your bad habits and develop good, supportive habits. The best way to change a habit is to change it slowly over time. That means breaking the big bad habit into small bad habits. And after that braking each small habit in 30 day periods.

For example: Let’s say, you like to stop on the way to work in nearby Starbucks to buy your usual muffin and late and maybe you like your late tasting sweet, so you put some sugar in it. And you have been doing this for several years regularly.

And now, if I tell you to stop visiting your favorite coffee shop and don’t go there anymore because of the empty calories you are consuming on regular basis, you will most likely not succeed with this strategy. Unless of course, you are an ambition driven animal. You were developing this habit for a long time now and it will also take some time to brake it.

So instead of changing this big bad habit at once, you brake the habit into small bad habits and change them slowly over time. Next time you go to the coffee shop, you will order only late and skip the muffin. And instead of that muffin, you’ll pack some apples and peanut butter for breakfast with you at home. Yes, you can still put some sugar into your latte, but you can’t have that muffin anymore. And you force yourself to do this over 30 day period of time.

You will still enjoy the visit to your favorite Starbucks. You will smell the delicious smell of coffee, you get your late and leave. No more muffin! Now you are eating apple and spoon of peanut butter instead.

Drip, drip, drip – slowly move forward

Now let’s say, you were successful with braking this first bad habit. And without any drastic change, you are on your way of changing habits, that will help you to loose weight. Now after the first habit is broken, after 30 days we will focus on other small habit. Yes, you guessed it right. Time to avoid that sugar in your late.

Surely it is just a very small amount of sugar, but it’s still a kind of little habit that doesn’t support your weight loss. And ultimately your weight problem is result of many small bad habits. So for next 30 days, you’ll go to your favorite coffee shop and order late. You take your late, enjoy the environment in coffee shop, smell the pleasant smell of coffee and leave. No muffin, no sugar, just your late.

After another 30 days your unhealthy morning routine is broken. Yes, having a sugarless latte is absolutely fine habit to have if you want to loose weight. Even if that late is made from whole milk. Whole milk and even half and half is fine. Enjoy it!

Drip, drip, drip

This way, you work down your list where you identified small bad habits that create big bad habits and slowly eliminate them. You might think, that this will take you a long time. And it will. But the bad habits you are going to be eliminating will be eliminated for good. And, hey!, you are making some serious steps toward toward loosing weight permanently.

It doesn’t matter how long it takes to loose weight permanently. All that matters is that you will eventually get there. And if you eliminate all the bad habits and install some good habits, you’ll certainly get there.

Adding good small habits

For every three bad habits that you eliminate from your list for 30 days each, stop the process of eliminating for 30 days and install one good habit. It could be a simple habit of drinking 7 glasses of water daily or walking for 30 minutes every evening or morning. Or just eating a bowl of salad every day.

Some other good weight loss supporting habits to introduce

Skipping meals – yes, this is what I recommend people to do. But, to do this, your diet needs to be perfect. And since you are just starting changing your habits, you might want to wait on this one to introduce little later.

Eating more and more vegetables and fruits every day – up to 10 servings and more.

Skipping escalators and introducing more unconventional physical activities in your life, like for example – getting of the buss one stop earlier and walking the rest, gardening, working in standing position instead of sitting, going for evening walks.

Having fresh berries as a desert.

Replacing pasta and rice for salad.

Introducing unsweetened herbal teas.

Listening motivational audiobooks in your car on the way to work.

Unsubscribing newspaper and skipping news in TV – Ignoring bad news.

Seeking good news – plenty of good news out there.

Going to sleep 1 hour earlier.

Loosing weight permanently is an ongoing and never ending process. Your success is the result of your habits. And by staying motivated and not rushing with this process and slowly working on eliminating and introducing habits you drip, drip, drip, slowly move toward your goal – to lose weight permanently and succeed.

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