Posts Tagged ‘weight’

I don’t count calories. Calorie counting I find to be both counter productive and an impediment to a healthy diet. It has taken some years to come to this conclusion. It’s not that calorie counting is not only useless it can be dangerous. Personally I have no intention of drinking Diet Coke or using artificial sweeteners. The question is do I want to poison myself to cut calories. Neither will I opt for a low fat variety of a whole food product. When calorie count mentality is out for the count health will win out.

Main Stream Diets

This is what I have against most main stream diet plans. They go with the flow and use  America’s perception of what getting slim is about. We would be a slim nation if we just ate whole unadulterated food.

What I find is that the popular diets get repeat business, by using the wrong guidelines, calories in and calories out. Weight management in this country is counter intuitive. It is becoming more and more desperate as people balloon off the charts.

Calorie Counting isn’t a Promising Solution

Bariatric sugery, and gastric bypass are drastic attempts to fix a problem that is so out of control. Part of the reason things have gotten to this point is we are relying on the calorie content of foods. Some of the heavily looked up terms are calories in strawberries, calories in apples and fruit calories. These terms get anywhere from 75,000 to 240,000 of look ups per month. Look where this information has taken us. We now can eat less fruit and vegetables and substitute them with 100 calorie snack packs of cookies.

Count Nutrients

Instead of counting daily calories a far better approach would be to count the nutritional content of the day’s food. Weight management should be about much more than calories. It shouldn’t be about how slim we can get, but on how healthy we can become. With that as a goal we will be able to maintain our idea weight. What we should want is a incredible body that functions incredibility.   

This is another way to look at what we do to ourselves, that no other species does.

 Can you give me the calorie count, before I indulge in some nutrient dense food?

The reason for the title BMI BMI is because it is a subject that calls for a double take. You hear this term all the time, but what does it mean?

What is BMI?

The body mass index (BMI) is an amazing tool. It is one of the easiest weight assessment tools. This is the good news, it is essentially the fastest way to find out where you fall in the weight scheme of things. It was invented in the 1840’s and has been used ever since. Body mass index is a number calculated from a person’s height and weight.

BMI is a starting point in determining if an individual is too thin or too heavy. It will not tell one if they are made up of more fat than muscle. However, it is a great starting point. Once you know your BMI you will have an idea of what your weight is and what it should be.

Body Mass Index

Is the body mass index (BMI) a powerful indicator of health? The answer is yes. Of course it’s not a guarantee of perfect health; it is a means to better health. It is a test that tells you if you have a serious weight issue. It does not tell you your overall body composition, how much of your weight is lean body mass and how much is body fat.

This point is brought up by detractors of this method to determine optimal weight. It has some merit, but the healthiest thing you can do to ensure physical health is keep your weight in check. The real point here is how you choose to manage your weight, if it is just about starvation diets than the body compositions will be unhealthy. Cutting out whole groups of foods and subsisting on coffee and toast is not how you deal with a weight problem.

BMI Calculator

A healthy weight is of the utmost importance throughout life. Obesity reduces life quality and expectancy. Regardless of all other tests your BMI is a strong indicator of overall health. Aiming for a healthy BMI can turn the page and help launch a simmer you. 

There is a good BMI calculator on the website: www.metabolicway.com that is more fun than the usual ones. For women it provides a way to see what their weight looks like. Let me know what you think.  

What is Weight Talk?

Weight talk is anything that has to do with BMI, the scale, the waist size, and fat content. This really means anything that shows up as pounds is part of the overview of weight management. From detoxifying diets that eliminate everything from bloating to chronic health conditions to carb or fat restrictive ones, we keep rolling the dice looking for an innovative way to lose the pounds. The major incentive to diet is being overweight.

The one thing that is usually wanted but missing from the dialog is a diet that is powerful, reliable and relatively inexpensive. With conventional diets there is usually an element that is territorial. What I mean by that is that the diet recommended comes from a corporate culture. Each corporate entity has its own set of rules, beliefs, products, and marketing.

This would be find and dandy if it worked long term across the board. There are some very good reasons that this is usually not the case. The top ranking diets are still in business with the help of repeat clients. Sustainability has to be the operative word when it comes to dieting. The word dieting is in fact the wrong word if you are looking for long term results.

Dieting and Pounds

Most dieters get swept up in the notion that a diet is about pounds. What is true is everyone that eats is following a certain type diet. It may be a junk food one, which is the make-up of one’s daily eating choices. There is a direct connection between food choices and body functions.

This is what weight talk should be about: reduction of blood glucose, good skin, reviving aging cells, and combating inflammation. Cellular energy is what the focus should be on. Excess calories have a impact on glucose, insulin, triglycerides and this is the reason that calories count.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle is the operative word for people that want change. Starchy processed foods that seem to have mass appeal are found manly in convenience foods. These are the foods found in paper and plastic wrap. Healthful eating habits make for more nutritious food options. Fat free foods are usually starch in disguise many times. When you talk about a reduced calorie diet the focus shouldn’t be on calories, but where the calories come from.

There are some breakthrough discoveries that we will present along with the science. We want people to be in control of what they eat, not the other way around. If we devoted this blog to weight management we would be addressing the deeper connection that food has to health.