1. Be a ‘healthy’ role model. The number one thing that parents can do is to be a good role model for their children, Parents so often unknowingly set their kids up for failure.  If there are chips, cookies and Twinkies and no fruit or vegetables when your kids look for snacks, how can they succeed?  Line your refrigerator and cabinets with fresh fruits, nuts, low-fat cheese, easy things for kids to snack on besides ‘junk food’.

In a 2000 survey conducted by the CDC, close to 80% of adults reported eating fewer than the recommended five or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily — not good role-model behavior.

2. Be positive. Don’t tell your child to ‘lose weight’ say, ‘Let’s be healthy and start taking care of our bodies’. Focus on the foods you can eat, not the ones that you should limit eating. Say, ‘Let’s go pick out fruits and make a fruit salad,’ not ‘Don’t eat this or that.’ Instead of saying, ‘We have to exercise,’ say, ‘Lets go to the park.’ Use positive words and phrases when talking with your kid.

3. Make healthy eating a family affair.  Create family meals together and for the entire family. Do not single out an overweight family member with special diet food.  Your entire family can benefit form healthy eating regardless of weight.

A family that eats together, eats better, according to a recent study in the journal Archives of Family Medicine. The study showed children who report frequent family dinners have healthier diets than their peers who don’t.

4. Avoid portion distortion. When serving food you must use portion control, buffet-type or family-style situations tends to promote overeating.  Fill up on salads and cooked vegetables  at meals and always wait 10-15 minutes before having a second helping.  Second helpings should only be taken if truly hungry.

5. Start the day off right with a good breakfast. A bowl of low-sugar cereal with low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt with a granola or breakfast bar, or an English muffin with peanut butter, rather than a doughnut or muffin. A healthy breakfast will put your family on the healthy track for the rest of the day.

6. Make time for physical activity. Make physical activity a family activity. Every night after dinner in the summer, go for a half-hour walk and make it an activity that kids look forward to. If you can afford it, enroll your kids in dancing or a sporting activity that they enjoy because they need to enjoy it to keep doing it. Or just turn on some dance music and have a dance party around the house.

7. Try again.  Weight loss and healthy eating is not easy.  There will be times when you and your family will struggle with this new lifestyle.  It is important to keep trying.  Failure is certain if you are not trying.

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There are 101 reasons why, but it can be a real pain to finally get that weight off. You push really hard, make a little progress, get side tracked, and bam you are heavier then you started.

It’s maddening.  Enough with that hassle, I have put together 5 simple steps to actually losing weight and keeping it off. These steps can be applied to anything, but we are focusing on weight loss here.

1.    Know What You Want
2.    Know Where You Are
3.    Track Your Results
4.    Make Course Corrections
5.    Being held Accountable

Now all your extra weight will effortlessly melt off.  Yeah right! A simple list of 5 items is not going to do it, so let me explain the intricacies of the 5 items and where the hang up normally occurs when applied to losing weight.

1.    Know What You Want

This one is dead simple. Most people that want to lose weight have an idea of how many pounds they would like to lose or how they would like their body to look.

I think we can safely say if your body started looking the way you wanted it, you would know, even if you didn’t have it completely mapped out and detailed.

2.    Know Where You Are

This is the big trip up. It is almost always overlooked and is the number one reason for the up and down Yo Yo effect we experience with losing weight. We are unhappy with how our body feels and how it looks and it is painful to zoom in and get an accurate picture of where we are. Unfortunately, we have to know where we are, to be able to accurately judge the results we are getting.

You are on a trip to San Diego, California. You would like to start your trip from Phoenix, Arizona, but you really don’t know where you are. No problem.  You get an Arizona/California map and find that a simple 6 hours trip west on interstate 8 will get you to San Diego.

6 hours later, you have no clue where you are and it is definitely not warm San Diego.  You feel defeated and you want to give up!  Do you blame the car? The stupid maps? San Diego? Yourself?

Now what if I told you, you were actually in New Your City, not Phoenix, Arizona. A 6 hour car ride west from New York City will never get you to San Diego.

If you took the time to accurately find out where you were, you would have been able to choose the appropriate means to get to San Diego and have an expectation as to how long it would take.

This is the same with weight loss and our personal physical condition. In our minds, we think we are starting in a different physical condition then we really are. When the results don’t follow the illusion in your mind, we get upset.

3. Track Your Results

This is conceptually simple. If we have no clue as to WHAT we are doing, how do we know what is working? It might be a simple to do, but is also simple not to do. In the end, most people never track their results.

4. Make Course Corrections

We love to do this one. We have it hands down. It is like step 1 of knowing what you want. We try the new food diet, the super sit up machine, and the cardio hip hop power energy yoga fat burner class.

We might be great at switching it up, but without knowing where we are starting from and a history of tracked results, we have no clue as to what we should change or even which direction we should go.

5. Being held Accountable

No, not accountability! That is an evil word. I don’t want someone to know what I am doing, or more importantly what I am not doing.

So, why do we resist accountability, your secret weapon to weight loss?  Because it works!  If you know someone is going to be watching, you would follow through or at least feel very uncomfortable not following through.

Accountability when used wisely is the ultimate turbo booster to your weight loss. Since you are going to be accountable anyway, you might as well get something out of it.

Using accountability up front, you can achieve the body of your dreams. If you let your body hold you accountable, it will throw on fat in places you don’t want it to be.

The biggest obstacle to weight loss is not taking any action. It doesn’t matter how good the plan is, it is worthless if you don’t follow it. So what do I do now?

First and foremost get Accountable.

Forward this article to someone you respect and care about and tell them I want to be accountable to finally taking off my extra pounds. When they agree to support you, start working through Steps 1 – 5.

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It may be generally agreed that eating wisely and weight loss do not often agree. Just look back that the parade of “fad diets” that didn’t seem to work over the long term and, in retrospect, were not wise from the onset.

This article will be a “union” of ideas from Ayurvedic principles, modern fitness concepts, and overall strategies for better health.

It goes without saying that a vegetarian diet is healthy. Only a decade ago, there were many reservations, among local physicians in New England, in regard to this concept. How rapidly knowledge, insight, and opinions change.

Marie, my wife, exposed me to the vegetarian diet. Before that, I ate what is now called the “Mediterranean Diet.” The diet I eat, to this day, is a combination of the two. The combination of these two, “classic” diets, are easy for me to live with and it is not an effort, at all, for me.

That is the biggest hurdle for most people. Many of us take on a radical dieting change that we cannot live with. Most of us can afford to make a few small changes at a time, instead of changing everything at once – unless you are dieting under the guidance of your doctor or dietician.

Therefore, I propose a few small changes to your eating habits that will make sense. You do not have to change them all at one time.

Sit down and focus on eating your meal.

Avoid television, reading, heated conversations, etc.

Thoroughly chew your food at a slow pace and do not put more food in your mouth until you have swallowed the previous bite.

Be aware of how hungry you are before your meal.

Try to avoid too much time between meals, as this leads to over consumption and your stomach should never be more than three quarters full, after a meal.

Exercise tip: Some of you practice Yoga and understand the many benefits of Sun Salutations, but have you ever tried weight resistance?

Strength training increases energy expenditure during a weight resistance training session. The high intensity of strength training indicates a high utilization of carbohydrates during a training session.

During the post-exercise recovery period, energy expenditure is elevated for a period ranging from two to fifteen hours (1). The increased energy demands are obtained by burning more calories, and a good portion of the calories are coming from fat stores.

Reference (1) – Melby C, Scholl C, Edwards G, Bullough R. Effect of acute resistance exercise on post exercise energy expenditure and resting metabolic rate. Journal of Applied Physiology 75(4): 1847-1853, 1993.

Even if you work every body part just once a week, this method of cross training will effectively burn calories. When you combine this with any aerobic activity, you have a powerful combination. Rowing and bicycling are good substitute forms of resistance too.

Strategies for results: Get help from a qualified Personal Trainer, Dietician, or a Life Coach. You could do it all yourself, but how much time do you have to “spin your wheels.” without any progress? These services exist for those who don’t want to waste time and want solutions now.

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