All that glitters is not Gold

This commitment of losing weight is not an easy one especially when you go out to eat at a restaurant or favorite diner. Many restaurants provide meals that sound like a good healthy choice, but they might not be. Recently, I was reading a web-report on fall comfort food offered at different restaurants and how many calories and saturated fat each one contains. It is incredible how something can sound so good and be bad at the same time. For example, a 6-ounce Golden Corral breast and wing combo with skin has 310 calories, 15 g of fat (5 g saturated fat). Did I say that this is Rotisserie Chicken? Yes, not fried but roasted chicken, you would think this is a healthier option. The skin and the dark meat make this dish a fatty one. Another meal that judging by the name is a healthy one is the IHOP Chicken and Spinach Salad. It is salad after all, but this one packs 1,600 calories and 32 grams of saturated fat.

What could you learn from this? If you are serious about losing weight, you need to be more careful and look at the calories and especially at the amount of saturated fats each meal carries.

To read more, check out these websites:

http://fitbie.msn.com/eat-right/tips/fattiest-foods-america/tip/4

http://fitbie.msn.com/slideshow/20-fall-foods-will-make-you-gain/slide/21

My first foray at weight loss.

            This week I am trying a whole different approach to losing weight. I have decided to replace a meal with one of those weight loss shakes. I will try a store brand, but I rather not discuss the specific product. The shake has a total of 170 calories. These shakes are very convenient, especially in the morning when I am on the run, getting the kids ready for school and dropping the baby at the sitter’s house. Another benefit is that they facilitate finding something to “eat” with low calories, which will satisfy and help with weight loss.

 Conversely, many of these meal replacement shakes have a significant amount of sugar and are not nutritionally balanced.  Moreover, sometimes one can get hungrier at the next meal because one did not consume enough calories and end up eating more.

 After weighing the pros and cons I have decided to try one of the shakes and see if I can correlate weight loss with meal replacements.

          Additional information concerning meal replacement shakes may be found in the following website: http://www.ehow.com/way_5675540_effectiveness-replacement-shakes-weight-loss.html.

It gets harder as you get older

Have you ever tried to do something and suddenly realized it was not as easy as it used to be? Losing weight is one of those things. I have come to realize that the older I get the harder it is to lose a single pound.

The other day I heard in a class that you need to burn 3,500 calories in order to lose a pound. Say what? Do you know how long I would have to exercise to burn that many calories? Too long, if you ask me.  Some say that it takes about seven hours burning 500 calories per hour to lose one pound. Research conducted by the National Institutes of Health (http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/september2011/09122011weight.htm) revealed that by making little changes to one’s daily consumption of foodstuffs one could control weight in the long run. The scientists discovered that if a person cuts 10 calories from the daily intake, it will take one year to achieve half of the planned weight loss. Now, tell me if you are willing to wait that long, or if you want to see results a bit faster? Please join me as I search for the most effective workout that will help me achieve my weight loss goal. I start my journey at the Rutgers University Gym in Camden, NJ.