Weight Loss Strategies - Stand Up

I was thumbing through the July/August edition of my favorite magazine: Men's Health, and I read an interesting tip that I thought would be perfect for the One Step Closer Tip.

On page 183, the editors suggest that people stand up at work instead of sitting. They site a study that found that people who sit for more than 6 hours a day are 68% more likely to be overweight.

The editors also suggest that we all ask for a stand-up desk. They state that we will burn an extra calorie per minute of standing versus sitting.

Research

The idea of burning an extra 60 calories an hour just by standing intrigued me; but I wanted to verify those numbers.

I searched online and in my literature for calories burned while standing and while sitting. The estimates were all over the place. I found references that calorie differences as low as zero and as high as 80 calories per hour.

Calories burned

I am sure that the difference is not zero because there are more muscles involved in standing than sitting. However, I am not convinced that it is 80 either. I have decided to estimate it at half the Men's Health value. So, I estimate that you will burn an extra 30 calories an hour standing versus sitting.

One Pound Closer

You must create a total calorie deficit of 500 calories a day through nutrition and activity to lose one pound in a week. If you stand at work for just 3 hours more than you usually do, you will burn an extra 90 calories a day. That is fabulous and very passive.

Get a stand-up desk and it will help you get One Pound Closer to your goal. According to the Men's Health editors, it will also improve your posture.

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Weight Loss Strategies - Do Push-Ups

Strength training has many benefits including:

• Boosting metabolism
• Burning calories
• Preventing bone loss

Strength training is expensive

The only problem with strength training is that it can be expensive. It is not cheap to join a health club. Home gyms cost an arm and a leg. It can also be expensive to buy free weights. So when you are "broke", what do you do?

Well, I have a piece of exercise equipment that I know you can afford. It is your body. Body weight exercises use your body as resistance. These exercises are good because they stimulate more muscles than free weights or machines.

Push-ups

The body weight exercise that most people have done, or tried to do, is the push-up. This is an excellent exercise. It targets many muscles including:

• Pecs (chest) - Primary target
• Triceps (back of arm)
• Delts (shoulders)

How to do a push up

1. Lie on your stomach with your legs together. The palms of your hands should also be on the floor next to you at the level of your shoulders.

2. Straighten out your arms slowly. Keep your back straight, abs tight, and legs straight as you raise your body.

3. When your arms are straight, lower your body until your chest almost touches the floor. Keep your back straight, abs tight, and legs straight as you lower your body.

Aim for three sets of twelve reps.

***If you can not do regular push-ups, try modified push-ups until you can do regular push-ups.

Modified push-ups are the same as regular push-ups except you do them on your knees.

Push-ups are an excellent way to get a good upper-body workout. Do them and Don't Go Broke.

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Check Your Cholesterol Levels Before Heart Disease Levels You

Atherosclerosis is a disease that leads to heart disease, heart attacks and/or strokes. The controllable risk factors for atherosclerosis are high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and sedentary lifestyle.

High Cholesterol

The number one controllable risk factor for having atherosclerosis is having high cholesterol. High cholesterol is indirectly dangerous because having it increases your risk of developing heart disease. If your cholesterol levels are high, lowering them can add many disease-free years to your life.

Blood Cholesterol Levels

In order to know if your levels are high, you need to have your blood cholesterol levels checked. Every adult should have their cholesterol checked at least every 5 years. You should have it checked more often if you have already been diagnosed with high cholesterol.

A complete blood cholesterol test is called a lipid panel or a lipoprotein profile. Before the test you must fast for at least 9 hours.

The lipid panel checks your total cholesterol, LDL (bad) cholesterol, HDL (good) cholesterol and triglycerides (fat in your blood).

Lipid Panel Results

Your goal should be to have a:

• Total cholesterol less than 200 mg/dL
• LDL less than 100 mg/dL
• HDL greater than 60 mg/dL
• Triglycerides less than 150 mg/dL

What To Do

If your total cholesterol, LDL and/or triglycerides are too high or your HDL is too low, you should discuss treatment options with your physician.

Depending on your risk factors, your physician may suggest lifestyle changes and possibly prescribe medication(s).

Lifestyle Changes

You can actively improve your cholesterol levels with lifestyle changes.

1. Nutrition: Decreasing the saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol and total calories in your diet will help decrease your total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides.

2. Activity: Increasing your physical activity will help to raise your HDL and lower your LDL.

3. Weight loss: Changing your diet and increasing your activity will help you to lose weight. Weight loss will further help to decrease your total cholesterol, LDL, and triglycerides while increasing your HDL.

Get your blood cholesterol levels checked and change your lifestyle today.

**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Sources:

National Cholesterol Education Program

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

The Benefits of Chromium

Chromium is an essential mineral. It is essential because the body needs it, but can not produce it. The typical diets of Americans are low in chromium. This is unfortunate because low chromium levels can increase your risk for many debilitating chronic diseases.

Benefits

Chromium works with insulin to improve the transportation of glucose out of the blood and into the cell. This function improves health in many ways, including:

1. Decreasing blood sugar - Chromium may help to reduce the amount of sugar circulating in your blood, decreasing your risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
2. Decreasing LDL - Chromium may help to reduce the amount of bad cholesterol circulating in your blood.
3. Increasing HDL - Chromium may help to raise the amount of good cholesterol circulating in your blood.
4. Decreasing blood pressure - Chromium may help to reduce your blood pressure.
5. Decreasing the risk of heart disease and stroke - Chromium may help to reduce your risk of getting heart disease, having a heart attack, or having a stroke by raising your HDL and reducing your LDL and blood pressure.
6. Decreasing body fat - Chromium may improve your body's insulin sensitivity, helping to reduce body fat.
7. Increasing lean body mass - Chromium may improve your body's insulin sensitivity, helping to increase muscle mass.

Where to find it

Chromium can be found in many common foods, including mushrooms, cheese, whole-grain breads and whole-grain cereals. You can also get chromium in tablet and capsule form.

To get the full benefit of chromium I would recommend you supplement with 200 micrograms chromium picolinate daily.

**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Sources:
Mayo Clinic
University of Maryland
VitaGuide

Start losing weight today without breaking the bank using Dr. Kal's Don't Go Broke Diet.

Laugh and lose weight at the Laugh Out Loud Weight Loss Blog.

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Weight Loss Strategies - Use Less Oil

I was standing in the cafeteria, trying to decide what to eat for breakfast. I wanted something high in protein and good fats with a low glycemic load. I decided to go with the omelet.

Mind change

While happily waiting in line for my breakfast, I watched the chef making the omelet. I noticed the amount of oil she put on the grill before sauteing the omelet filling and frying the eggs. I started trying to calculate how many additional calories the oil added to my "healthy" omelet.

It was finally my turn; but before I gave my order, I asked her how much oil she typically used. She did not know. I also asked her what type of oil she used. She told me it was vegetable oil. I then told her thanks, but no thanks

Oil

I had two problems with the omelet:

1. The type of oil used
2. The amount of oil used

I would have preferred extra virgin olive, canola, or peanut oil. However, more importantly I would have preferred less oil.

Weight loss

We have established that in order to lose one pound of fat every week you have to create a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day through the combination of diet and exercise.

Creating that 500 calorie deficit can be difficult, especially when we add unnecessary calories to our foods. One tablespoon of oil is about 120 calories. If we could eliminate those 120 calories we would be that much closer to our 500 calorie goal.

Oil reduction

The oil for sauteing or light frying can easily be omitted. You could:

• Invest in non-stick cookware
• Purchase an oil mister
• Buy cooking sprays

The next time you are making an omelet, use cooking spray. A one second spray of PAM olive oil is 7 calories. A table spoon of olive oil is 120 calories. You'll save at least 115 calories and the eggs will taste the same if not better.

Sources:

PAM

Calorie King

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Weight Loss Strategies: Go To Blockbuster

Aerobic activity is typically expensive, but services such as Blockbuster Online and Netflix have made it cheaper than ever.

Aerobic exercises

There are countless number of people who do their aerobic exercises at gyms and fitness centers. They ride stationery bikes, climb stair climbers, use elliptical machines and run/jog/walk on treadmills. They also participate in aerobic, pilates and yoga classes. This equipment and these classes are all very effective at burning calories. However, these gyms are expensive.

There are other people who do their aerobic exercises in their homes. They have stationery bikes, stair climbers, elliptical machines and/or treadmills at home. This is effective because they work out in the comfort of their own home, often while watching television. However, this type of equipment is expensive, especially if you want quality.

Those who can not afford the gyms or the exercise equipment, choose to jog/run outdoors or use exercise DVDs. Exercise DVDs are a great way to get an inexpensive workout. However, people often complain that they get bored of the DVD after they watch it a few times. They seek more variability.

Online DVD rentals

Blockbuster Online and Netflix are services that allow you to select movies and have them delivered to your home. When you are done using the movie, you return it in a special envelope provided by the company.

These plans have no late fees and you can keep the movies as long as you like. Both of these companies have $4.99 per month plans that allow you to rent 2 movies every month. I prefer Blockbuster Online because you can use your plan to rent movies at the brick and mortar Blockbuster locations also.

The Blockbuster Workout Plan

With the Blockbuster Workout Plan, you pay $4.99 every month and get 2 exercise DVDs a month. You alternate between the two and when you are bored with them, you select other DVDs.

This plan is inexpensive. It also adds variability because Blockbuster updates their DVD libraries often.

Sources:
Blockbuster

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

The Benefits of Green Tea

Green Tea is a type of tea made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. Green tea contains antioxidants called polyphenols. The most active polyphenol in green tea is epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).

Benefits

The polyphenols in green tea help the body to repair the damage done to it by age, time, and the environment. These repairs can lead to many health benefits, including:

1. Prevent atherosclerosis - Green tea's antioxidants may help you prevent atherosclerosis.
2. Decreasing LDL - Green tea's antioxidant may help to lower the amount of bad cholesterol circulating in your blood.
3. Increasing HDL - Green tea's antioxidants may help to raise the amount of good cholesterol circulating in your blood.
4. Decreasing the risk of heart disease and stroke - Green tea may reduce your risk of getting heart disease, having a heart attack or having a stroke by preventing atherosclerosis, decreasing LDL and increasing HDL.
5. Reducing the risk of cancer -Green tea's antioxidants may reduce your risk of getting multiple types of cancers.
6. Boosting metabolism - Green tea's polyphenols along with the caffeine in the leaves may help to increase your metabolism. This would allow you to burn more calories 24 hours a day, eventually leading to weight loss.

How to get it

To get the full benefits of green tea, I would suggest you either drink 4 cups of brewed green tea a day or take 500mg of green tea extract (standardized for EGCG) once daily.

**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Sources:
Mayo Clinic
University of Maryland
VitaGuide

Start losing weight today without breaking the bank using Dr. Kal's Don't Go Broke Diet.

Laugh and lose weight at the Laugh Out Loud Weight Loss Blog.

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Weight Loss Strategies - Walk More

Walking is an excellent way to help you lose one pound every week. It is simple to do and has multiple benefits.

Walking, for most people, is a necessary annoyance. We use it to get from point A to point B. We have been doing it since we can remember and we try to avoid it at all cost.

We hate walking so much that we have created multiple strategies to keep ourselves from having to do it:

• Automobiles
• Elevators/Escalators
• Remote Controls
• Moving walkways
• Drive-thrus
• Delivery services
• Online shopping
• Driving around looking for the closest parking space

But walking may be the easiest way to lose your one pound a week.

Calories burned while walking

The average person walks about 3 miles per hour when walking briskly. They also burn around 100 calories for every mile walked. A thirty minute brisk walk equals one and a half miles and 150 calories burned.

You have to create a 500 calorie deficit a day to lose one pound a week. One thirty minute walk a day would knock out 150 of those leaving you with only 350. It's not easy to lose weight, but it's definitely doable.

Other benefits of walking

According to the AARP, walking has numerous benefits including:

• Managing your weight
• Controlling your blood pressure
• Decreasing your risk of heart attack
• Boosting your "good" cholesterol
• Lowering your risk of stroke
• Reducing your risk of breast cancer and type 2 diabetes
• Avoiding your need for gallstone surgery
• Protecting against hip fracture
• Lowering stress levels
• Improving sleep
• Elevating overall mood and sense of well-being
• Strengthening muscles, bones, and joints
• Preventing depression, colon cancer, constipation, osteoporosis, and impotence

What more could you ask for?

Walk for 30 minutes a day so you can get One Pound Closer to your goal.

Start losing weight today without breaking the bank using Dr. Kal's Don't Go Broke Diet.

Laugh and lose weight at the Laugh Out Loud Weight Loss Blog.

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**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Tim Welch on CNN's Fit Nation

Tim Welch's weight loss success story was featured on CNN's Fit Nation.

Key Take Aways From Tim Welch's Weight Loss Journey

• Adopt a well-balanced nutrition plan that includes "good" carbs and "good" fats.
• Don't give up all of the foods you love, eat them in moderation
• Find activities you enjoy to help burn calories, such as swimming, walking and water aerobics.
• Find a supportive friend to encourage you and calm your fears
• Understand that you will not be perfect
• Don't be so hard on yourself.
  

Start losing weight today without breaking the bank using Dr. Kal's Don't Go Broke Diet.

Laugh and lose weight at the Laugh Out Loud Weight Loss Blog.

Return to Dr. Kal's Weight Loss Blog Main Page

**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

The Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Omega-3 fatty acids are a type of essential fat, which means our body needs them but can not produce them. Omega-3 fatty acids are also a type of unsaturated fat, which are good fats that can improve your overall health.

Benefits

These are three major types of Omega-3 fatty acids (O3FA): eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). These fatty acids reduce inflammation in your body, improving your health in multiple ways, including:

1. Increasing HDL - O3FAs may help to raise the amount of good cholesterol in your blood.
2. Decreasing LDL and triglycerides - O3FAs may help to reduce the amount of fat and bad cholesterol in your blood.
3. Decreasing blood pressure - O3FAs may help to lower your blood pressure.
4. Decreasing the risk of heart disease and stroke - O3FAs may reduce your risk of getting heart disease or having a stroke by increasing your HDL and decreasing your LDL, triglycerides and blood pressure.
5. Control blood sugar - O3FAs may help to control your blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
6. Decreasing the risk of cancer - O3FAs may reduce your risk of getting multiple types of cancer.
7. Decreasing feelings of depression and hostility - O3FAs may reduce or eliminate your feelings of depression and/or hostility.
8. Treating acne - O3FAs' anti-inflammatory effects may also aid in treating acne.
9. Decreasing menstruation symptoms - O3FAs may reduce the severity of the symptoms associated with P.M.S.

Where to find it

The best sources of Omega-3 fatty acids are fatty cold water fish, such as salmon. There are also numerous Omega-3 fatty acid supplements on the market.

To get the full benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids, I suggest you eat at least two servings of fatty cold water fish per week or take a daily O3FA supplement that provides at least 360 mg of EPA and 240mg of DHA.

**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**

Sources:
Mayo Clinic
University of Maryland
VitaGuide

Start losing weight today without breaking the bank using Dr. Kal's Don't Go Broke Diet.

Laugh and lose weight at the Laugh Out Loud Weight Loss Blog.

Return to Dr. Kal's Weight Loss Blog Main Page

**Please consult your physician, registered dietitian, or certified fitness professional before starting or changing your diet or exercise program.**