The 6 Kitchen Tools You Must Have!

1.    A Very Good Stainless Steel Pot and Pan Set

It can be very demoralizing to realize that the pan you bought recently is peeling and has left chunks of non-stick coating in your dinner. I don’t like using pans with non-stick coating and find the stainless steel pans work great at distributing and holding heat and I don’t have to worry about using a metal spatula in it by mistake or about what’s leaching into my food that I don’t see.

2.    An Excellent (and Sharp) Knife

Chopping can be time consuming and it’s all the more tedious if your knife isn’t top quality. The sharper the knife, the better; you are much more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife if you have to apply pressure to force the knife through the food.

3.    A Sturdy Box Grater

Obviously this is great for cheese rather than using slices as it allows you to distribute a finer amount and therefore get more bang for your calories; but it can also be used for a number of other applications. Grating carrots onto your salad as a lovely garnish, grating ginger into a stir fry to add a very quick and fresh zingy taste, grating sweet potatoes to top a sweet version of Shepherd’s Pie. It’s great for slipping more vegetables in without them taking over the whole meal. The more you use it, the more ideas you will have of other ways to use it.

4.    Freezer- and Oven-Safe Storage

Because I prepare all of my meals from scratch, if I go all out and put together an elaborate meal, I want to be able to save a few servings and save myself some time later on. I store my leftovers in individual-sized containers and freeze them. Then, when I’m on my way to work in the morning, I grab one out of the freezer and by lunch it’s ready to be popped in the office toaster over. I save hours of lunch-packing time and on nights when I don’t have time to cook, the individual sizes are quick to thaw and heat up in the oven.

Buy a Best Selling Blender - It's An Absolute Must-Have For Your Diet & Nutrition Program

Buy a Best Selling Blender - It's An Absolute Must-Have For Your Diet & Nutrition Program

5.    A Blender

Humus, smoothies, cream soups, sauces. When you control what you put into these easy to make items, you can leave out a lot of calorie-heavy ingredients and adjust the seasonings to your own preferences. If you have a blender and keep it handy you can make a wide variety of healthy meals, sides, and snacks which will give you a lot more variety without having to put together complicated recipes.

6.    An Ice Cream Maker

Last but not least, finding healthy deserts that taste great but that aren’t loaded with calories can be a challenge when you first start cooking healthy. An ice cream maker and one or two basic recipes for frozen yogurt can conquer that sweet tooth craving without throwing your plans off course. You need only add your favorite fruits (fresh or frozen) to a basic vanilla or other neutral recipe to have a tasty low calorie desert.

When watching their calories, many people forget to calculate the liquid calories they ingest. If you’re trying to follow a sensible diet & nutrition program, it’s worth knowing that alcohol contains 7 calories per gram; that’s about 100 calories for a glass of wine and about 150 calories for a beer (depending on its alcohol content)! If you’re having a mixed drink, you’re going to take in over 200 to 300 calories. And all these calories provide you with little to no nutritional benefit.

Alcohol also makes you hungry. Who can’t think of a post-bar trip to a late night greasy spoon after a night of revelling? And since your inhibitions and your reasoning are inhibited (and alcohol has stimulated your appetite), you’re likely to eat more as well as to eat things that you wouldn’t otherwise choose to eat.

Alcohol Undermines Your Weight Loss, Diet and Fitness Plans in Almost Every Way Imaginable

Alcohol Undermines Your Weight Loss, Diet and Fitness Plans in Almost Every Way Imaginable

Alcohol also changes the rate at which you burn fat. Calories consumed as alcohol don’t get stored as fat. They get converted to a substance called “acetate.” Acetate is burned quickly by the body and is therefore burned off before the fat stores you are working hard at eliminating.

Finally, alcohol increases your insulin levels by promoting the release of extra insulin from the pancreas. This extra insulin causes your blood sugar to dip more than it should and makes you hungrier. It also causes you to make more fat and to direct that fat toward the fat cells located around the center of your body.

Not only is this extra weight less proportionately distributed and therefore more obvious to the eye, carrying your weight around the belly as opposed to distributed over the entire body is also a predictor of heart disease.

It’s perfectly fine to have a glass of wine with dinner every now and again (just remember to take those extra calories into account), but if you are consuming alcohol regularly or are binge-drinking, you are undermining all the weight loss efforts you’re putting in during the rest of your day or week.

When you are trying to Get Fit Fast, it only makes sense to limit the consumption of something that provides empty calories, makes you hungrier, converts more of the calories you take in to fat, stores more of your weight around the center of your body, and reduces your ability to make clear decisions about the foods you eat.

Try giving up alcohol for a few weeks and see if you don’t notice the scale move down a little quicker.

My guess is that would be pretty hard on your budget and would cause you some pretty serious problems were you to do it regularly. Yet, that’s what many people do with their daily caloric intake and energy expenditure.

Do The Math

Losing weight isn’t complicated, it’s a little math. You have to burn more 3,500 more calories than you take in to lose one pound of fat. Losing weight is like saving money. Earn more than you spend and, in the long run, you’ll reach your goal.

Calorie Counting Doesn't Have To Be A Pain

Calorie Counting Doesn't Have To Be A Pain

Now, I’m not suggesting you start counting every calorie you eat or burn from now on, but wouldn’t it make sense to have a ballpark idea of how many calorie “dollars” you were spending every day? And it would probably be useful to find out how many you have to spend as well.

There are a number of different calculations out there to determine how many calories your body needs to maintain your current weight or to lose weight but it is an imperfect science since it is difficult to measure your exact amount of regular activity and even more difficult to guess your body’s exact metabolic speed. You can kill two birds with one stone by keeping a food journal for a week.

Okay I can already hear sighing out there. Before you open your email editor to write me a disgruntled email about why you won’t be one of those people who calculates every amount of food they ingest, take a deep breath, and read on. I’m not suggesting you do this for the rest of your life or even for the rest of the time you are working on weight loss.

Keep Track

I’m suggesting that you keep track of what you eat (day, item, quantity, and portion size) for 7 days. Include how much mayonnaise you put on your sandwich, whether you had one or two tablespoons of dressing on your small salad, your cup and a half of OJ with breakfast, and so on. After that time, you’ll have a good idea of how many calories your body needs to either maintain, gain, or lose weight.

On the first day, weigh yourself in the morning before you begin eating or drinking. Do the same on the 8th day. If there has been a change in weight, note it (in pounds will be easiest so that you won’t have to convert it later on during calculations. Then, review each day in your journal and count up how many calories you ate over the course of each day.

There are a number of websites and books out there with calorie information for at least the most common foods. Some are surprisingly complete and have information for even unusual or exotic items. The USDA even has a National Nutrient Database available online that you can use. Once you tally the calories in each day, add the total of all the days together and make note of your weekly calorie total.

Did You Lose or Gain?

If you lost or gained weight during the week, take the amount you lost or gained (in pounds) and multiply it by 3,500. If you lost weight, add this new multiplied number to your calorie total for the week. If you gained weight, subtract it from your week’s calorie total.

Finally, divide the result of this addition or subtraction by 7 and you will get your average daily calorie intake to maintain your weight at your current activity level. This is like figuring out your salary. This is how much you can “spend” without gaining or losing weight.

In the next post in this series Calorie Counting: Calculating Your Dieting Budget – Part 2, we’ll look at the other side of your calorie budget and how to better estimate and factor in the “cost” of the things you are spending your “calorie salary” on when you are eating (without constant calorie counting).

If you’re good at handling your finances, but are still struggling with your weight, the good news is these skills are perfectly transferable.

Since you’ve already calculated the amount of calories you have to spend (see Calorie Counting: Calculating Your Dieting Budget – Part 1), we can move right on to applying that. First, we need to measure the cost of the various items. It can be very hard to estimate the number of calories in the foods we eat.

People Underestimate Calories

In fact, when people are asked to roughly estimate the caloric content in a large meal, one set of studies showed that people underestimated calories by 23 to 38%! If you want to make sure you’re not exceeding your daily calorie budget, you need to have a better idea than that about what you’re eating.

Conveniently, doing this 7-day food journal exercise helps you get a more accurate idea of that. Chances are that a large percentage of what you eat regularly will show up over the course of these 7 days and you will have a much better idea of the caloric “cost” of many of your regular items.

You may find yourself surprised by how high or low some of your regulars are in calories. You don’t need to memorize these numbers, but after collecting and tallying a week’s worth of food, you now have a ballpark idea of what these foods are worth.

Use a Financial Model of Weight Loss to Balance Your Checkbook and The Scales!

Use a Financial Model of Weight Loss to Balance Your Checkbook and The Scales!

Armed with this information, you can begin to change the amounts you eat so that you begin eating less calories than you’re burning. If you wanted to save $35.00 a week, you would have to spend $5.00 less each day than you earn. In order to lose a pound a week (3,500 calories), you will need to be burning 500 calories more than you are taking in every day.

An easy way to keep track of this while keeping the financial model in mind (without going so far as to write out every last calorie) is to pick up a pack of “fake” money. Any play money will do but having play money with different denominations (10, 50, 100) will work best. You can usually pick packs of play money up at dollar stores, toy stores, or, if you have an old board game that no one uses, you can commandeer its bankroll.

Get yourself an old wallet, a couple of envelopes, a couple of jars, whatever will work for you. Count out an amount of play dollars equivalent to the daily calorie budget that you calculated yesterday. Then use one envelope or jar to hold what’s left to spend for the day, and another to hold the amount you’ve spent.

Spend Wisely

Since you now have an idea of what your most common foods cost you in terms of calories, when you eat, simply move approximately the same amount of dollars from your “to spend” envelope, jar, or pile, to the “spent” pile when you eat. Try to “spend wisely” so that you will have $500 left in the jar at the end of the day.

If you have any play money left in the “to spend” jar, even if you don’t have a full $500, you will have lost a little weight that day. Just like with saving money, if you do that for enough days, it really adds up.

So if you’re good at finances, but having a little trouble with weight loss, use what you know you’re good at to help get you through what you’re having trouble with. Use a financial model of weight loss and before you know it, both your checkbook and the scales will be perfectly balanced.

But when you’re spending more money than you should be, there are two ways you can fix the problem. One way is to spend less, the other is to earn more. Let’s look at how you can “earn more” calories to spend in order to either lose more weight or be able to eat a few more of your favorites.

When you run out of money and you need to pay off debt, sometimes you may need to take a second part-time job for a while, do a little extra work on the side, maybe freelance here and there, or find some other way of earning extra money. Weight loss is the same.

Weight Loss is Simply About Burning More Calories Than We Take In

Weight Loss is Simply About Burning More Calories Than We Take In

Increase The Activity Levels

If you’ve gone over your spending limit long enough that you are now carrying extra weight, or if you would like to loosen up how much you are able to eat without gaining weight, you might want to consider upping your activity level. This work you do on the side can be in addition to your regular workout or, if you don’t have a regular workout, it can mean starting one.

Is there somewhere in your schedule you can slide in a few more minutes of workout time here and there? Perhaps a little elliptical work for 10 to 15 minutes before you jump in the shower at the start of your day? Maybe a brisk walk or jog on the treadmill while you’re waiting for the pasta to boil?

What about taking a walk around the block in the evening for a half an hour instead of watching reruns of that show you don’t even really like all that much? Any little moments of extra time that you can squeeze in will add up and, unlike overtime or a part-time job, no one needs to approve your extra hours and you don’t have to send out any résumés!

Increase The Intensity

Another way to earn more is to get a raise. If you don’t have the time (or the desire) to work out anymore than you already are, then maybe what you need to do is earn more in the time you are already using. Increase the amount of calories you’re burning by walking at 4 miles per hour instead of 3, but for the same amount of time. Turn up the tension on your workout machine just a little or supercharging your cardio workout and burn more calories in the same amount of time.

It can sometimes feel like there is no rhyme or reason to our weight loss efforts or their woes but, just like your finances, it’s really just a matter of not spending more than you’re earning. Weight loss is just as much of a numbers game as our personal finances are and if we treat it that way, we can get where we want to be faster.

According to a survey by the Calorie Control Council, a nonprofit association for the low-calorie and reduced-fat food and beverage industry, diet sodas are the second most popular low-calorie, sugar-free products in the country. Such consumption may one reason why so many Americans overweight, and why I can’t seem to lose that last ten pounds.

A new study published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, reveals scientific evidence that the more artificial sweeteners we consume the harder the time we have in losing weight.

When It Comes To Weight Loss & Diet Sodas, There Is Some Compelling Evidence That Diet Sodas Can Actually Make Us GAIN Weight

When It Comes To Weight Loss & Diet Sodas, There Is Some Compelling Evidence That Diet Sodas Can Actually Make Us GAIN Weight

Psychologists at Purdue University compared two groups of rats: one was fed yogurt sweetened with real sugar at 15 calories per teaspoon, and the other were fed yogurt sweetened with calorie-free saccharin. The rats given the calorie-free sweeteners ate more food, gained more weight, put on more body fat than their sugar-fed counterparts.

The study’s authors, Susan Swithers and Terry Davidson believe that artificial sweeteners may hinder our body’s ability to regulate food intake. The rats that consumed artificial sweeteners may have experienced a psychological and physiological connection between taste and calories.

Perhaps,if we consume a drink that tastes as though it has a lot of calories but doesn’t, our bodies will search for the calories promised but not delivered, making us hungrier for sweets and high-fat foods.

Such theories may apply to rats, but what about humans? from an eight-year long study directed by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH, and her associates at the University of Texas Health Science Center found that humans also gain weight when ingesting artificial sweeteners.

Fowler’s team studied data on 1,550 white and Mexican-American Americans aged 25 to 64. One third of the 622 participants who began the study at normal weights became overweight or obese when the study ended.

Fowler found that soft-drink drinkers faced the following risks of becoming overweight in the eight-year period:

26 percent for one-half can per day

30.4 percent for one-half to one can per day

32.8 percent for one to two cans per day

47.2 percent for more than two cans per day.

Diet soda drinkers faced the following odds of becoming overweight:

36.5 percent for up to one-half can per day

37.5 percent for one-half to one can per day

54.5 percent for one to two cans per day

57.1 percent for more than two cans per day.

In other words, for each can of diet soda you drink each day increases your risk of becoming obese by 41 percent. Fowler cautioned that diet soda and obesity are necessarily a causal relationship, rather there is an unknown factor found in both obesity and artificial sweeteners.

One possible part of the explanation is that people who see they are beginning to gain weight may be more likely to switch from regular to diet soda, Fowler said. But despite their switching, their weight may continue to grow for other reasons. So diet soft-drink use is a marker for overweight and obesity.

We consumers must understand that just because we drink diet soda doesn’t automatically mean we are on a diet. Many of us have been guilty of ordering a McDonald’s Big Mac, large fries, and a hot apple pie WITH a Diet Coke! Even though we use artificial sweeteners doesn’t mean we are no longer accountable for what we put on our plates.

The reality is that a healthy diet & nutrition program is not just about swithing to products labelled as ‘diet’.

For me, I may think twice about opening another can of Diet Coke, even if it’s cherry-flavored!.

Unfortunately, this is unrealistic. (Sorry) Your body stores fat in a way that is determined by your genetic makeup, not by which areas you work out. When you eat more than you burn in any given period, you will store fat. That fat is typically distributed around the abdomen for men and around the abdomen, hips, and thighs for women; although there are probably as many variations on the distribution of weight as there are people. 

When Losing Weight, You Can't Spot Reduce Specific Areas

If your body tends to store its weight around your thighs, for example, no thigh machine will change that. Losing fat is not like carving wood away from an area to sculpt a statuette; it’s more like spending money in a bank account.

If you’re spending less than you’re taking in, your savings will grow. Good for your finances; bad for your belly. When people learn about this for the first time, they sometimes have an urge to turn away from weight training and focus exclusively on cardio work, figuring that this is the best, or possibly the easiest, way to burn enough calories to spend that storage of fat in their perceived problem area.

There are a few good reasons not to do this. For one, as that fat begins to melt away, if you’ve maintained a good weight training program, you end up uncovered a beautifully toned body bit by bit, rather than a body that just looks like a shrunken version of an un-toned you.

A second, perhaps more compelling reason, is that as you continue developing your muscle tone, you increase the baseline amount of calories you burn every day, even when you’re not working out. The more muscle you have, the more energy you burn.

Weight training also helps develop bone density and decreases your risk of injuring yourself outside the gym during your day-to-day routine. And of course, as you are doing your strength training routine, you are burning calories.

Now, don’t let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction either; don’t abandon your cardio routine. Cardio is important to your overall health as well as to your weight-loss efforts and should be an integral part of your plan.

Just don’t rely on it exclusively once you’ve put the spot reducing myth to rest. So if you want to get rid of your love handles, don’t waste your time looking for the next Love-Handles-B-Gone machine. Focus your attention on total body strength, flexibility, and cardio-vascular fitness, as well as a healthy diet.

This really is the fastest way to getting fit. And, in a way, isn’t this easier? By following one path, all your problem-areas (and your non-problem-areas) are covered and they improve together. If you really did have to carve fat away from each portion of your body, piece by piece, wouldn’t that be a much more daunting task?

In studies conducted at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, researchers found that lack of sleep altered the levels of hormones that influence appetite and satiety. Study subjects who were deprived of sleep experienced stronger appetites and a 45% increase in their cravings for calorie-heavy foods high in carbohydrates.

Weightloss & Sleep - Not Getting Enough Sleep May Lead To Weight Gain!

Weightloss & Sleep - Not Getting Enough Sleep May Lead To Weight Gain!

Researchers also found that subjects who reportedly got less than eight hours of sleep each night had higher levels of body fat than their more rested counterparts did. In fact, those who slept the least, tended to weigh the most.

The chemicals that seem to be involved in sleep’s connection to weight loss are called leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin affects your appetite and leptin alters feelings of fullness and satiety. When you aren’t getting enough sleep, the balance of these two hormones is thrown and you can find yourself feeling hungrier than you normally would. As a double whammy, when you do eat, you don’t feel as satisfied or as full and you are more likely to overeat.

Sometimes people who are trying to lose weight find that they are faced with increased feelings of hunger when they first begin altering their eating habits (a problem we will look at in my next post). How much more difficult would it be to keep your mind off food (and out of the sugary snack cupboard) or to stay on track with your brand new habits if you were compounding that with increased cravings due to lack of sleep? And who can drag themselves through their workout when they don’t feel they have enough energy to get through their day as it is?

So how much sleep do you need? For most, seven to nine hours of sleep is enough, but the best way to find out exactly how much you need is to continue going to bed earlier and earlier (5 to 10 minutes every two to three nights) until you regularly wake up 15 to 20 minutes before your alarm clock goes off. Because your body is used to its routine, you may find that you wake before your alarm clock after only a few days, only to begin to sleep until the alarm rings again after a few more. If that happens, just go back to setting your bed time earlier and earlier until you can maintain the same bed time for over a week, while still waking, feeling well-rested, before your alarm sounds.

In order to fall asleep quickly and sleep more soundly, turn most lights in your home down or off twenty to thirty minutes before you settle into bed and avoid television, computers, work, or any other mentally stimulating activity.

In addition to stabilizing hormones, getting enough sleep will improve your mood and your productivity and can, paradoxically, make you feel as though you have more hours in your day because you are more alert and efficient. So, while you may not literally be losing weight in your sleep, getting enough rest is one of the easiest tools to help you get fit fast. Make it part of your fitness program and cover up, settle in, and dream your way to fitness.

My problem is this – though I love health, fitness, and extreme sports, I also love to eat. And if I allow myself, I could eat all day, and sometimes I do, which has led to years of yo-yo dieting. I’m not proud of this, but I do need to confront the problem if I am going to correct it.

More and more research has confirmed that yo-yo dieting can be hazardous for your health. A study published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology of 485 female heart patients found that yo-yo dieters had low levels of HDL cholesterol – the good kind – that helps prevent heart disease. The HDL deficit was particularly acute in women who had lost and regained 50 or more pounds.

Get Off The Yo-Yo Diet Cycle for a Healthier Life

Get Off The Yo-Yo Diet Cycle for a Healthier Life

Yo-yo dieting can even increase our risk of cancer, according to Dr.Cornelia M. Ulrich of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center In Seattle,Wash. Dr. Ulrich took 114 overweight women older than 50 years and asked them about their weight histories. About 85 of the women had lost more than 10 pounds at least once via. dieting in the previous 20 years, while more than 55 of the women had done it more than two times.

The researchers also measured the levels of natural immune system cells “killer cells” that kill viruses and could help fight cancer.

The women who had yo-yo’d more than five times measured the lowest levels of the killer cells; women whose weight had been stable for several years measured the highest levels. Even women who had only twice lost large amounts of weight showed a decrease in the killer cells.

How do we fall into the yo-yo cycle? For me it starts when I forget or neglect to eat mindfully. Instead I eat whatever I want whenever I want justifying my actions with excuses and rationalizations. When I finally get on the scale after a period of falling off the wagon, I’m obviously horrified. At this point, I and others like me, become impatient wanting to lose the weight as soon as possible; so we look for quick fixes.

We go on fad diets and rejoice as pounds, which are often water weight, disappear. But soon, we burn out and resume our old habits. There have even been times when I’ve taken the slow, safe approach, only to eventually forget myself and slowly but surely put the pounds back on.

Simply put, permanent weight loss requires a life long commitment taking in no more calories than we use. Anyone who wants to lose weight but can’t make that commitment is bound to end up on the yo-yo. Personally, I’m ready to throw out the yo-yo and replace it with continual conscious and nutritional eating. You’re welcome to join me on this journey.

Cycling Instead of Using Your Car Gets You Fit AND Cuts Your Fuel Costs!

Cycling Instead of Using Your Car Gets You Fit AND Cuts Your Fuel Costs!

The most obvious application of this concept is exercise. If  I ride my bicycle to work and walk to the corner store instead of driving, I can save gas (and money) and reduce the amount of pollution for which I am directly responsible. And of course, at the same time, I increase my physical activity levels. You may already be doing this type of thing yourself, but have you thought of expanding this concept to include the foods you buy?

Many of the items available in supermarkets today are over-packaged and have traveled long distances to reach the shelves. Countless foods available at our local superstores are also calorie rich but nutrient poor. Often these foods overlap. Foods with fewer preservatives, “clean foods,” often pack a higher nutritional punch and are frequently environmentally cleaner.

In most supermarkets, the outside perimeter of the store is a good place to start looking for the foods with the least packaging. This is often where you’ll find the fruits, vegetables, meats, and bulk items such as grains and beans. Conveniently, it is also the best place to start when looking to add nutritional oomph to your diet and nutrition program while being calorie-conscious, and the foundation of your diet should be built from the foods located in these aisles. The high-fiber grains, high-antioxidant and nutrient-rich vegetables and legumes, quality meats and fish, and other foods found in these areas are the mainstays of a high quality diet that can help you get fit fast.

Grains, nuts, seeds, and beans bought in bulk bins are often less expensive than pre-packaged options and allow you to save on packaging and eliminate waste. Nutrient rich, calorie conscious whole grains (which need only be rinsed, set to simmer, and seasoned to taste) are an excellent alternative to the often excessively packaged instant side-dishes that we buy. Despite being marketed as “time-saving” alternatives, these instant options often have as much or more hands-on preparation time (and calories!) as from-scratch options. By buying the less-processed items, you can save not only on packaging and money, but also on empty calories, additives, and sometimes on hands-on time.

When I want to go that extra mile, so to speak, I also select items that were grown nearer to home. By doing this, I’m encouraging the stores to buy locally, reducing the amount of fuel used to ship large quantities of vegetables a third of the way around the globe and I’m helping local businesses. The benefit to me is that I get foods with more vitamins and minerals since the farther food is shipped, the longer it is off the vine before it makes it to my plate, and the more nutrients are lost. They also happen to require less packaging for the trip since they aren’t going to be exposed to as much handling.

None of this is to say that we need to abandon our favorite pre-packaged snacks completely (though perhaps the thought of making a homemade version of it will spark your interest and tickle your wallet). Instead, look at the foods in the center aisles of your local supermarket as having the same relationship to your diet as spices have to a good meal: just a little adds plenty of flavor but too much throws it off balance. So do the planet, your wallet, and your waist a favor: go green, eat clean, and get lean.