Change Your Mind to Change Your Body

Your body is a primarily reflection of your mind. If you have a disciplined mind, you can control the shape of your body. You can easily control your diet to gain or lose weight, and improve or destroy your health, beauty, and fitness based on your habits, and YOU are the one who controls your habits! Although your mind does control your body, it is hard to see changes in your mind. On the other hand, it is easy to see changes in your body, and changes in your body affect your mind. For example, when you exercise, you feel energetic. When you lie on the couch and take a nap, you feel lazy. If you want to feel energetic more often, exercise more often. If you want to feel lazy more often, exercise less often, or not at all.

Regardless of how you would like to improve your body, whether you want to lose weight, gain weight, or just improve your health, there are four steps to follow:

1. Set clear goals 2. Eat wisely 3. Exercise daily 4. Think positive

1. Set Clear Goals If you do not set a clear goal, how will you ever know if you have achieved it? Exactly what is your goal? Is it to weigh 115 pounds? or maybe 185 pounds? or maybe to have a 30 inch waist? These are all clear, measurable goals. You can tell with a scale or a tape measure whether or not you have achieved your goal, and how far you have to go. Setting a goal like, "I want to look good in a bathing suit" is not specific. What does it mean to look "good"? What looks good today may not look good tomorrow. "I want to fit into a size 6 dress" is specific, because you either fit into the dress, or you don't. It is clear. In order to set clear goals: a. Identify where you are. b. Set a specific goal c. Set a deadline d. Make a detailed plan

2. Eat wisely Whatever you put into your body becomes the raw materials to build your body. If you eat junk, you will have a junky body. If you eat healthy foods, you will have a healthy body. A. Don't smoke. Avoid drugs like alcohol and caffeine, and of course the more dangerous illegal drugs. B. Avoid chemicals that are not really foods like nutra-sweet, preservatives, and food dyes. C. Avoid junk foods like cookies, cakes, and candies that are high in calories and carbohydrates, but low in nutritional value. Instead, eat nutrient rich foods like fish, poultry, and fresh vegetables. D. Drink seven cups of water each day to cleanse your body. E. Eat slowly and chew your food completely to get the best nutrition out of each bite. 3. Exercise daily

Exercise every day for at least 20 minutes, but preferably for longer. If you are healthy, you should break a sweat during exercise. If you are unhealthy or recuperating, you may have to settle for more moderate exercise like walking. To help you see the relationship between exercise and diet, here are some facts and figures on the number of calories you burn in an hour: Sleeping 72 calories per hour Sitting 84 calories per hour Walking 300 calories per hour Cycling up to 400 calories per hour Jogging / Weight lifting Running / Martial Arts / Aerobics up to 600 calories per hour 800 to 900 calories per hour Now look at the number of calories in common foods: Chocolate cake (1 slice) 345 calories can of cola (12 oz.) 145 calories Pie (1 slice) 300 calories baked salmon (6 0z) 310 calories 2 cookies (3 inches) 240 calories wheat bread (2 slices) 150 calories potato chips (10) 155 calories broccoli (1/2 cup) 20 calories

So if you take a 30 minute walk, and then come back a drink a cola, you will you've only burned 5 extra calories. If you go to martial arts class for 45 minutes, and you have some cake for dessert at lunch and some pie for dessert at dinner, you will actually gain weight.

4. Think Positive

Remember: your mind controls your body, and you become what you think. Think positive, and become positive. If you believe it, you can achieve it. In order to continue to think positive over a long period of time: A. Write down your purpose for losing weight. B. Get support from your family C. Intentionally visualize yourself how you want to look D. Talk about your dieting program E. Find any potential obstacles in achieving your goal and devise a plan to overcome them. F. For every 5 pounds that you lose, celebrate with those who have supported you, including friends and family.

Once you have made these plans, execute them and never, ever give up, even AFTER you've accomplished all of your goals, so that you don't fall back into your old habits. The best way to maintain your new body is by teaching others to reach the same positive goals. That way you are reminding yourself why you did what you did, while helping others reach their goals and live healthier lives in the process.

Preventing bad health is always better than trying to cure it. Take care of yourself by eating and drinking wisely, exercising daily, resting properly, and thinking positively. Follow the Four Wheels of Health to change your life for the better. Take care of your health when you are healthy. Don't wait until it's too late. Weight Loss Meals

The easiest way to lose weight slowly is to simply cut out junk food like desserts and unhealthy snacks. Stop eating cookies, cakes, and candy, and you will begin to lose weight. You can still treat yourself to something sweet once or twice a week . . . just don't do it three or four times a day! Here are some samples of healthy meals that will allow you to lose weight even faster:

Breakfast:

Eggs, any style, with or without cheese, and vegetables. You can eat them sunny side up, poached, scrambled, or as an omelet. You can even add ham, bacon, or sausage as long as you can be sure the meat has not been flavored with sugar (read the label). You can have fish like smoked salmon or lox, and cream cheese.

Carb meals: you can have carbohydrate meals like oat meal, cream of wheat, shredded wheat, all bran, etc., as long as you are sure they contain NO sugar, and you do not mix them with milk, which contains fat (you can use fat free milk, because it is a carbohydrate and you are eating a carb meal.)

Lunch:

Any salad, with fish or meat: Southwestern chicken salad, Cajun shrimp salad, blackened grouper Caesar salad, etc. Just be sure the salad dressing and the flavoring of the meat/fish contain no sugar, and the salad contains no croutons. Don't ruin the meal by adding a drink that contains sugar. Any chicken, turkey, fish meal with salad or green vegetables. Watch out for high starch vegetables like corn and carrots. Soups are difficult, because they usually contain pasta, rice, or potatoes. Many times a chef will "thicken up" the soup or sauce with corn starch, which is a carbohydrate. Carb meals: you can have carbohydrate meals like whole wheat pasta, or brown rice with vegetables; just do not mix the carbs with proteins like meat or fats like oils and cheeses.)

Dinner:

Many people eat the same kinds of food for lunch and dinner. Again, any salad or any chicken, turkey, or fish meal. Make sure your meat or fish is not breaded.

It's fairly easy to eat at a restaurant: you can order the poultry or fish dishes, and just be sure to ask them not to bring bread, pasta, or rice. Most restaurants will substitute a vegetable for the starch, if you ask. Then, your only worry is whether the sauce has sugar. Again, ask, and they will usually accommodate you. You don't need to count calories, you don't need to starve yourself, and you don't need to worry about fat content. In fact, stay away from "fat free" foods, because most fat free foods are very high in carbohydrates. That's why when you look in the supermarket, everything is fat free but the people.

When you reach your desired weight, you can add back into your meals healthy carbohydrates: fruits and fruit juices, whole grains, and higher carbohydrate vegetables like corn and potatoes. A healthy diet should contain carbohydrates; you simply reduce them and do not mix them with fats while you are losing weight. However, do NOT go back to eating junk food like cookies, candies, cakes, and chips. If you must eat dessert, again, limit yourself to once or twice a week.

A simple weight loss plan: Modern research points to a very simple and effective process for weight loss: switching your body from energy storage mode to energy burning mode. If you are overweight, your body has been in energy storing mode too long, storing the excess energy from the food you eat in the form of fat. You can easily switch to energy burning mode and begin burning your fat for energy, losing weight, and feeling more energetic. The most effective way to switch to energy burning mode is to drastically reduce the amount of carbohydrates you eat. You probably have as much as two days of energy stored in your muscles in the form of glycogen. As soon as you stop eating carbohydrates, you begin burning off the glycogen. During this time you may feel weak or have cravings for sweets. Within about two days, your glycogen reserves will be used up and your body will begin looking for other energy sources, including the fat you have been storing for just this purpose. When your body switches from storing fat to burning fat, you start the process of weight loss. At this point, most of the cravings and weakness stops and you feel a constant flow of energy. This process is very easy to follow. Basically, in order to re-set your body, you must stop eating all simple carbohydrates (sugars in any form), and all complex carbohydrates (starches) for a few days. You must stop consuming chemicals that affect your metabolism like caffeine, artificial sweeteners, nicotine, and alcohol. If you follow these simple guidelines, you can still eat enough food to keep your belly full and your metabolism high, but you will begin to lose weight. You can eat proteins in the form of chicken, fish, eggs, and even red meats (although we don't recommend them in any healthy diet), as well as fats like cheese, oils, butter, and low starch vegetables (most greens) and tomatoes. To put it simply, if you are used to eating a balanced meal of meat, vegetables, and starch, you simply cut out the starch. Of course, you must also cut out the dessert and the sugary drinks. You can eat three healthy meals a day and you won't need to feel hungry. How does it work? Whenever you eat or drink anything that contains sugar or high glycemic carbohydrates, your blood sugar increases and your body releases insulin to store the excess sugar as glycogen and eventually as fat. If you do not eat or drink anything that increases your blood sugar, then you do not release insulin, and you do not store fat. As long as you are not eating massive amounts of food, you also begin burning fat for energy. It's that simple. In order to follow this diet effectively, though, you must be on the lookout for sugars. You can loose weight eating a low carbohydrate breakfast of a cheese omelet cooked with butter and fresh vegetables, but if you mix those proteins and fats with carbohydrates by adding a single piece of toast, or a glass of orange juice, or a cup of coffee with sugar, your body will release insulin and shift into fat storage mode. Once you have re-set your body (after the first few days), you can eat carbohydrates, but do not mix them with fats and proteins while you are losing weight. You can still lose weight while eating carbohydrates, and we recommend you eat at least one carbohydrate meal a day, to keep regular.

Tim McCarthy has been a professional writer of health newsletters, articles, and magazines for the past 15 years. Check out his blog at HealthandBeautyFitnessDiet.BlogSpot.com or his website at www.healthandbeautyfitnessdiet.com.