Diet
4U Online News Letter
February 28 2001
In this issue you’ll find,
1.
Diet Tip of the Month
2.
Quote of the Month
3.
Something New
4.
Article of the month
5.
Recipe of the month
Diet
Tip of the Month
Don't skip meals. Eat plenty of snacks. Eating kicks up your metabolism, causing you to burn more calories per hour. Skipping meals keeps you from taking advantage of this and encourages overeating when you finally do eat.
Quotations
for Dieters
"Mere survival is an affliction. What is of interest is life, and the direction of that life." - Guy Fregault
Diet 4U Online is very excited to announce our new Meal Plan.
The
Zone Diet Made Easy
Yes, the Zone Diet by Barry Sears made quick and easy!! zone
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the 1-2-3 method and finally given up because it was just too difficult and
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We have taken Dr. Sears' Zone diet and calculated a six week program that tells
you EXACTLY what to eat and when. No more guessing on what, how much and
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The pounds and inches will disappear as you follow this low carbohydrate, high
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Article
OF THE MONTH
The Role of Exercise
Exercise will influence not only how much you weigh, but also the
composition of your body weight. Your goal is to make certain that you
maintain or improve your body fat-to-lean-mass ratio. (Losing lean body mass
and gaining body fat is counterproductive.)
The way to maintain or increase your lean body mass is by exercising. For
this reason, it is important that you set realistic daily exercise calorie
expenditure goals and meet them on a consistent basis. Only with the proper
consistent exercise and nutritional regimen will you assure that the twin
goals of losing body fat and preserving (or even gaining) lean body mass are
achieved.
A Simple
Way to Maximize your Benefit from Exercise.
Research has shown that
exercise steps up your metabolism for several hours after you perform the
exercise. This means that for several hours after you exercise, you will
burn calories at an elevated rate. This is a good situation for you since
you are trying to lose weight. If you ride your bicycle, say, for 15 miles
each morning, your metabolism will be at an elevated level for six or more
hours. But if you ride your bicycle 7.5 miles in the morning and 7.5 miles
at night (by say, commuting to and from work), you'll elevate your
metabolism once in the morning for six or more hours, then once again at
night for another 6 or more hours.
By performing half your exercise in the morning and half at night, you can
increase the benefit of increased metabolism following a workout without
actually working out more.
Muscle and Calories.
Keep in mind that muscle (a
form of lean body mass) requires energy. Muscles burn calories. And the more
muscle you have, the more calories you burn every hour of the day. It takes
energy (expressed in calories) to maintain your muscles. The more muscle you
have, the more calories you need to burn. Fat, on the other hand, is
calories - and because fat is calories, it doesn't contribute to burning
calories... fat is your body's way of storing calories.
Increasing your muscle mass is an excellent way to burn more calories (and
lose weight). Resistance training has been shown to be the most effective
way to increase muscle mass. And the most popular form of resistance
training is weight training.
The Secret to Setting Realistic Exercise Goals & Maintaining Motivation
If you are considering taking up an exercise program, either to compliment
weight loss efforts or simply to improve your overall health and fitness, it
is important to establish realistic, short term goals so that you experience
feelings of success early on in your programme, and are therefore more
likely to continue with it.
A common reason for failing to continue with exercise is
lack of motivation,
and this often arises because people have set their targets too high, making
exercise feel like an unpleasant chore and associating feelings of failure
and guilt with it.
How do you set realistic goals? This takes practice, but
the first and most
important step is to objectively analyze your current level of fitness. If
you feel you are very overweight and/or suffer from any medical conditions
it would be wise to consult your doctor at this stage. If however you are
generally well but have not exercised for many years and lose your breath
when running for the bus - then it would be wise for you to start with
modest, achievable goals such as walking briskly for 20-30 minutes once or
twice a day.
After a couple of weeks you could establish a new goal
involving gentle
jogging for 15 - 20 minutes daily and once this becomes easier, increase
your jogging speed and jog for 30 minutes per day. If you prefer to exercise
inside, you may consider joining a gym. Most now offer an initial fitness
assessment, the results of which form the basis for establishing exercise
goals, which are usually reviewed after about 6 weeks. Many people choose to
avoid all possibility of exercising in public and opt instead to do so in
the comfort of their own homes. Given the choice of exercise videos and home
gym equipment now available this is a very viable option, provided you can
discipline yourself to religiously set aside the time and can ensure that
you will endeavor to avoid all temptations to be sidetracked by other
distractions.
Whichever way you choose to exercise you will be more
successful if you set
yourself goals, and if you make those goals realistic and attainable. By
setting short-term goals, you gain the benefit of providing yourself with
ongoing motivation, a commodity most of us possess in abundance during the
first weeks of an exercise program, but rapidly lose, either because we
have unrealistic expectations and do not achieve them quickly enough, or
because we make the experience of exercise unpleasant due to doing too much
too early.
Once you have honestly assessed your level of fitness,
it is time to
establish short-term targets, and this is what takes practice. It is very
important to record in writing what your goals are, the date by which you
believe you can realistically achieve them, and the method by which you will
succeed. It is amazing how putting the plan in writing helps you to feel
responsible for the program, and therefore helps you to stick to the plan.
If for example you consider yourself to be unfit and therefore decide on the
realistic and not unpleasant exercise that brisk walking will provide, the
next step is to decide upon your goal so that you are not simply aimlessly
walking around, and so that you will move on to more demanding exercise,
advance your exercise program and maintain motivation. Record how long you
intend to walk for in each session and how frequently. For example - 30
minutes of brisk walking once per day, every day of the week.
Now you must determine your goal or target. It could be
that you will walk
briskly around the park three times within the 30 minutes, or that you will
walk for a specified number of miles in the 30 minutes. Remember, this is
the point at which you must be realistic so that you do not set yourself up
for failure. Once you have established your goal you must set a date upon
which you will evaluate your degree of success, for example in 14 days time.
It is important that your evaluation time is also realistic, and it should
not be set too far into the future as you may lose motivation.
If all goes
well, when evaluation day comes you will be able to pat yourself on the
back. You will begin to associate the pleasant feeling of success with
exercise and will look forward to setting and reaching your next realistic
goal!
If however, you do not achieve your goal by evaluation
day, don't simply
move the goal posts. Sit down and evaluate why you didn't. This is much more
constructive than chastising yourself, feeling guilty or giving up. You may
have set an unrealistic goal -goal setting isn't as easy as it sounds - but
it does become easier with practice. Maybe you really didn't try hard
enough. Maybe it wasn't the right type of exercise for you, i.e. you
genuinely found it tedious. Once you discover the reason, you can take steps
to put it right, re-establish your goal, and set yourself up for success by
next evaluation day.
To sum up, the secret to maintaining regular exercise is
to maintain
motivation. The secret to maintaining motivation is summed up in four steps.
Firstly you must objectively evaluate your current level of fitness and at
what level you are capable of exercising at this time. Secondly you must
establish simple, realistic and achievable goals, based upon your honest and
objective assessment of your fitness. Thirdly you must set evaluation dates
and not criticize yourself if you fall short of your goal. Fourthly, set
your next goal, plan how you will achieve it, set your evaluation date and
go for it!
Diet
4U Online provides Meal Plans of three meals and
three snacks a day including all the foods recommended by the latest cutting
edge nutritional research including avocados, so you do not have to worry that
you are missing the latest information for your health. Let us do it for
you!!
Achieve your
goals in 2001!!
Makes 4 servings
1 package
(9-10 ounces) mixed salad greens
1 can (15
ounces) mandarin oranges, well drained
1 package (6
ounces) cooked and sliced chicken
2 thin
slices red onion, quartered
¼ cup
pecans, toasted
½ cup
prepared light Italian or balsamic vinaigrette dressing
2 ripe
avocados, seeded, peeled, and cut into chunks
In large
salad bowl, combine salad greens, mandarin oranges, chicken, onion, and pecans.
In small bowl combine dressing and ½ cup avocado cubes. Mash and blend into
dressing. To salad add remaining avocado cubes and dressing. Toss and serve.
360 calories per
serving; 18 grams protein; 30 grams carbohydrate; 21 grams fat
(4
grams saturated fat; 12 grams
monounsaturated fat, 5 grams
polyunsaturated
fat); 35 milligrams
cholesterol; 10 grams fiber; 510 milligrams sodium
For more FREE
recipes see our Diet 4U
Online Recipe Page A new recipe
is added every Sunday.
If you have not already signed up for one of our programs, please
consider doing so now!!
Our prices are:
Only $75 for 12 weeks, this is only 89 cents a day for an individualized program!
For Clinical
Nutrition Program:
Only $75 for 8 weeks, this is only $9.38 a week for an individualized program!
Do not confuse us with the other programs out there that supply you (and hundreds of others) with the same web page meal plan. Our plan is TRULY for you only, with your weekly personal meal plan sent to you at your e-mail address.
Go to our Sign Up Now to pay on a secure server by credit card, or E-mail us for an address to send your check to today and start toward your year 2001 goals today!!
Thank You,
The Staff at
Diet 4U Online
questionnaire@diet4uonline.com