7 Tips To Add Results to Your Diet

These seven tips are not new, you may have heard them before and dismissed them. I use all of these tips and they seem to help me in my diet/LifeStyle Changes.

1. Never do your food shopping while you are hungry, in fact I try not to go into any store if I am hungry.  Mainly due to the snack foods and candy bars  usually being next to the cashier, and if I am hungry the snickers bars call my name, which increases my odds of buying one and scarfing it down.

2. Eat smaller meals throughout the day, two to three hours apart. I usually make my normal lunch plus one plain sandwich. I eat half of my lunch at about 10:00am, eat the remaining portion between noon and 1:00pm, and the sandwich at about 4:00pm, half my normal dinner at about 7:00pm and the other half just before I go to bed. This keeps me from starving at night and raiding the frig. It also helps to keep my body from going into a starvation mode, and tends to help keep my metabolism high.

3. Drink a lot of water, around a gallon or more a day, and make it ice water. This not only helps hydrate your body, but it also helps burn calories as your body warms the water, which uses calories and then urination helps flush the body and expels heat. Initially, I was running to the bathroom every 20 mins, but after about a week my body got use to the proper amount of water and adjusted so I am not running all the time. Prior to doing this I tended to be dehydrated all the time, which has alot of negative effects. I have noticed that my skin and color look better, and drinking a lot of water helps me loose weight, the scale doesn’t lie.

4. Keep uncomfortably cool. This helps burn calories as your body increase blood flow to the skin to help regulate your temperature. This one is hard, at first. I turned the thermostat down to 68 degrees, climbed out of my sweats and socks, exchanging them for shorts, a T-shirt and bare foot. You want to be cool, not shivering or getting goose bumps. I also slept in my shorts and T-Shirt, and left my upper body outside of the covers. Sleeping was a little harder as my wife is cold natured and would keep pulling the blankets and comforter up, which caused them to flop over on top of me. I finally had to fold the comforter in half,and put it all on her side of the bed.

5. Maintain good posture, it burns more calories and helps firm up your stomach. Until I started paying attention to this one I never realized how often I would sort of slump down when sitting and how often I would either be laying down, or leaned over sideways on the couch. Also when I walked I tended to slump my shoulders instead of standing up straight with shoulders back and stomach in. The first several days I was actually sore in my upper back from keeping my shoulders in the proper position. Good news, I have had fewer lower back pains.

6. After dinner wait 20 to 30 mins., and go for a moderate pace walk for about 30 mins. This will increase your metabolism for a limited time, and after you get use to it, its a lot of fun. I will either get on the treadmill, or my daughter and I will go for a walk. Either way, it gives us some Father Daughter time, and helps he reduce my excess energy and stress.

7. Sleep, everyone is different but the general rule is get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Sleep is the most often over looked and is one of the most important things we can do. Sleep is when your body, mind, and spirit is renewed and refreshed. I use to sleep 5 to 6 hours a night, mainly because of my type a personality, I would lay down and my mind would start running at 100 miles per hour. It would take me 30 to 45 mins. to fall asleep and a lot of the time I would end up getting up for an hour and watching TV until I was almost falling over before I would go to bed. I credit my diet changes and exercises with reducing my stress and allowing me to fall asleep quicker and I now sleep about 7 & 1/2 hours a night. This also gives me more energy during the day, no more 30 min naps before dinner.

I did not make up these tips, some of them I have heard for years around work and the gym. Others I found in reading articles, books and on the Internet. Regarding these tips, exercise and diet, I found a book written by Ellington Darden, PH.D. He has over 40 years of experience in the field of diet/exercise and has been involved in numerous studies on weight-loss. He has worked for Nautilus and currently does studies and articles for Bowflex. His book is titled, The Bowflex Body Plan, and has a lot of good basic information regarding diet and exercise. That is explained in a very concise and easy to understand format. It’s cost is around $30.00 and is well worth the price.