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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
An oldie but goodie submitted by KBT
ONLY
ONE POUND!!
Hello, do
you know me?
If you don't, you should.
I'm a pound of fat,
And I'm the HAPPIEST
pound of fat that you would ever want to meet.
Want to know why?
It's because no one ever wants to lose me;
I'm ONLY ONE POUND, just a pound!
Everyone wants to lose three pounds,
five pounds, or fifteen pounds, but never only one.
So I just stick around and happily keep you fat.
Then I add to myself, ever so slyly,
so that you never seem to notice it.
That is, until I've grown to ten, twenty, thirty or
even more pounds in weight.
Yes, it's fun being ONLY ONE POUND OF FAT,
left to do as I please.
So, when you weigh in keep right on saying,
"Oh, I only lost one pound." (As if that were
such a terrible thing.)
For you see, if you do this,
you'll encourage others to keep me around because
they'll think I'm not worth losing.
And, I love being around you -
your arms, your legs,
your chin, your hips and
every part of you.
Happy Days!!!
After all, I'm
ONLY ONE POUND OF FAT!!!
Author Unknown
********************************************************
Submitted
by Laurie (Laurdee)
FOUR STEPS
TO ACHIEVEMENT
Plan purposefully.
Prepare prayerfully.
Proceed positively.
Pursue persistently.
William
A. Ward
******************************************************
Also from
Laurie:
Here's a link that have a lot of interesting things. It's from
Defcon one's Body building, Health and Fitness page.
http://members.home.net/castronova/
How Water Helps You Lose Fat
Drinking
enough water is the easiest thing you can do to lose excess fat. And best
of all, it’s free!
Drinking
water is not just to make your mouth feel less dry. In fact, if you
wait until you’re thirsty, your body is already dehydrated because your
salivary glands are the last resort for getting hydration to your cells.
Water is what causes your body to function efficiently.
One of the
first signs that you aren’t getting enough water is fatigue.
Sometimes we satisfy the need for a burst of energy with coffee, which
is the
opposite of what you need. Coffee is a diuretic, which actually dehydrates
you further, nurturing a self-destructive cycle.
You’ll see
that drinking sporadically during the day also suppresses your
appetite – your hunger for water is the cause of the craving, not the
need
for extra calories. Thirst signals are often confused with hunger signals.
If
you aren't used to drinking much water, this could be more of a problem
to
you than for people who are familiar with the feeling of being thirsty.
People who
don’t drink water get a small amount from the food they eat, which is
not nearly enough. For them, hunger and thirst feels like the same thing
– so along with the tiny bit of water absorbed from food, they also get
the unnecessary calories, which are stored as extra fat.
A sure sign
that you’re dehydrated is the color of your urine. If you’re
drinking enough water, it should be very light yellow to clear in color.
Medium yellowish to nearly orange in color merits a trip to the water
fountain. (Any other colors merit a trip to the doctor.)
Water helps
your liver convert fat into usable energy. If you don’t drink
enough water, your kidneys are overwhelmed with concentrated fluids, and
they make your liver do extra work. Your liver works hard to turn your
body fat into energy you use, and if it has to do the kidney’s work, then
you hold onto the extra fat that would have been burned if you’d simply
had enough water. And what’s worse is that instead of excreting water
and waste products, you reabsorb used water to reuse. This is what causes
water retention and bloating.
When you
don’t get enough water, your body panics and holds on to it
selfishly, as though you’re in a famine. The best way to get rid of this
water retention is to drink enough of it.
You’ll also
feel thirsty more often, and this will start a healthy cycle of
thirst leading to hydration. But you have to keep it up because if you
stop
drinking enough water, all the good things you’ve gained from drinking
water
(balanced body fluids, weight loss, decreased hunger and thirst) will
reverse
back to the way they were.
You need
at least 8 cups of water a day. If you exercise or live in a dry
climate, add 2
more cups, and if you’re overweight, drink 1 to 2 extra cups. Overweight
people have higher metabolic requirements, more waste products to flush
out, and it helps keep extra skin from sagging after the fat is gone.
Here’s a
good water drinking schedule that will help you remember to drink
until you don’t have to think about it anymore:Get a 32 oz. plastic cup
at a drug store to drink from. One big cup seems
easier than lots of little ones.
Sip one big
cupful in the morning as you’re getting dressed.
Have one cupful during the late morning/early afternoon.
Drink one
cupful gradually in the late afternoon/early evening – the earlier
you finish this one the better so you won’t have to get up during the
night.
Even without
changing your eating and exercise habits, increasing the amount
of water you drink will cause your fat cells to shrink. Do all three
consistently, and you’ll easily get to (and maintain) a healthy weight.
******************************************************
Submitted
by Jill
Jill got
it from her WW leader and it's got some really good tips on breaking through
a plateau. If you BCB's have any additional tips for future publications,
please email Anne!And just wanted to give credit where credit is due...
we received an e-mail from Elizabeth (a registered member of 3 Fat Chicks)
stating that she wrote the tips and previously posted them on the 3 Fat
Chick's web site). She went on to say that she was glad that we all enjoyed
them. Thank you Elizabeth for sharing these great tips!
15 Tips for Breaking through a Plateau
1. JOURNAL,
JOURNAL, JOURNAL
This is one
of the most powerful tools to help you stay on track or get back on track.
Your journal can help you see where you are perhaps going over or under
on your number of points for the day, or aren't getting in the Guidelines
for Healthy Living requirements. Use your journal as a detective tool:
Had a good
week? Look over it at the end of the week and try and see what you think
contributed to that success. Had a not so good week? Again, look over
your journal to see what may have contributed to you playing a little
looser with the program. Look at last week's journal for clues too, sometimes
it takes a
full week before the effects of a blown week show up.
2. Eating
By the Numbers
(Or are you getting in too
many carbs? Protein? Not enough fat?)
Look at your
food choices, are you really getting a wide variety of foods in? Remember,
your body needs nutrients from lots of different sources and if you're
eating the same things all the time or too much of one type of food, you're
probably not getting the proper nutrition your body needs. How is your
protein to carb ratio? Look at the Eating by the Numbers chart on page
8 of your Week 1 booklet for suggested guidelines of how to most nutritiously
spend your points during the day. These are suggested ranges for someone
under 200 pounds, for over 200 take most of your extra points from complex
carbohydrates and protein.
There's a helpful Excel spreadsheet on Rea's homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/6548/
that is called something like the Points Food Groups Journal that she's
got set up for 28-35 points per
day, but all you've got to do is input your points range and the suggested
guidelines from the Eating by the Numbers chart for the various food groups.
This
can help too if you're one of those old WW selection plan people who just
don't like the Points system. You can use this to follow the points, but
use it for the
selections of the various food groups so that you keep a healthy balance
in your points.
Take a look
at your food choices as sometimes we have the attitude that as long as
our points balance at the end of the day we're okay, but if we keep in
mind the Guidelines for Healthy Living on pages 5-7 of the Week 1 booklet,
we'll see that we still are asked to do a few steps to ensure we're spending
our points in a way that keeps our bodies healthy.
3. Weigh
and measure portions
Too many
times our portions have gotten bigger without us realizing it, using measuring
cups and spoons and weighing out our portions can give us a better idea
if our portions have suddenly grown bigger than we're counting. Remember,
portion size does matter.
4. Read labels
carefully
Are you counting
your points right for the product that you're eating. I remind everyone
of my jumbo dinner frank story where the serving size was half a
frank! Who eats half a frank? I was counting 4 points when I should have
been counting 8 points. If you're eating a bigger serving size than the
one listed on
the label you're probably eating more points than you calculated.
5. Remember,
zero multiplied is not zero
(okay, not when it comes to food points)
If you're
eating one serving of fat free sugar free gelatin for 10 calories, okay,
that's zero points, but if you're now eating 4 servings plus 2 tbsp of
fat
free whipped topping, you've got yourself one point! Beware of those hidden
extras where we multiply portions, and beware of BLT's: Bites, Licks,
and
Tastes that never seem to get counted on any journal. These add up.
6. Too many
refined carbs?
Are you eating
too many sources of simple and refined carbohydrates, the stuff that's
heavily processed and no longer looks like its natural food source. Think
of
it as the difference between whole grain bread and processed white bread,
brown rice vs. white rice, popcorn cakes vs. corn on the cob. Try to include
more of the natural sources of carbohydrates in your diet stuff like beans,
yams, potatoes, brown rice, and whole wheat anything rather than so many
crackers,
pretzels, and chips (even low fat chips). This is not to say you can't
have any refined carbs, just try to limit the amount of them if you're
having trouble
7. Not enough
fat?
Okay, this
sounds counterintuitive, but according to the Eating by the Numbers chart
and for good nutrition you should be actively adding in about 2-3 points
of
fat per day. This is stuff like vegetable oils, margarine, butter, regular
or reduced fat (not fat free) salad dressing, avocados, regular or reduced
fat
(not fat free) mayonnaise, olives, and peanut or soy butter. I have personally
met a number of people now who weren't losing and when I suggested they
start
actively adding in 2-3 points of fat per day they started losing again.
Our bodies need enough fat in order to properly function. You think there's
enough
fat in my food already, right? Not when you're limiting your number of
points in order to lose weight. We are often making much lower fat choices
than we normally would have, and as a consequence our consumption of fat
falls far below the recommended guidelines according to lots of nutrition
experts of
30% of your total calories in fat per day. If you are limiting your fat
intake to only the fat that's naturally in food and even then you're probably
taking
the skin off the chicken and drinking skim or 1% milk, then you might
only be getting around 10% of your calories in fat per day, not enough
for your body. So,
the reason our bodies need enough fat in our diets each day as opposed
to just feeding off of our body's fat stores is because fat contains an
essential fatty
acid: linoleic acid, that our body can't produce on its own. That fat
is needed for proper metabolic and digestive function. Fat provides essential
nutrients
our bodies need, it transports fat soluble vitamins that our bodies need,
it is needed for proper digestion and metabolic function, it helps us
keep
fuller longer, keeps our hair and skin nice, and is crucial for proper
gallbladder function. If you're on a super low fat diet you can develop
gallstones that
are no fun and super painful.
8. Drink
half your body weight in water each day
According
to Barbara Levine, R.D., Ph.D., the Director of the Nutrition Information
Center at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and reported in
the
June issue of Weight Watchers magazine, she says that overweight people
need more water than the typical 8 cups a day rule. "Overweight people
tend to need more water, because fat cells hold more water than other
fat cells in the body. To determine the number of ounces of water you
need per day, divide your weight by two. For example, a person who weighs
140 pounds
should consume 70 ounces, or about 9 cups. Of course, this is an estimate.
The best way to gauge whether you are getting enough water is to monitor
the color of your urine. If you're drinking enough, it should be the color
of pale straw. If it is a deeper yellow, you're not getting enough fluids"
(page 16, June 1999). Lots of times we misinterpret thirst for hunger,
try water first, wait 20 minutes, real hunger will not go away.
Number 9-15
coming in our next issue!
Additional Plateau Buster Submitted by Anne
Pretend like
this is your first week again.
Read all your materials, remember the
enthusiasm and try to recapture that feeling and
dedication to the program this week.
******************************************************
Submitted
by Little Debbie and fellow BCB's
BOOK REVIEWS
... oops!
Look like they forgot to submit! Come on you BCB's and send us more for
our next issue!
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