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Issue
2 Volume 1 WELCOME NEWBIES…… WE’RE GLAD TO HAVE SUCH A COMMITTED GROUP OF PEOPLE JOIN US AND HOPE YOU WILL BE WITH US FOR A LONG TIME TO COME!!! We’d like to start off this month’s edition with a lovely email Denise received from Dotti, of www.dottisweightlosszone.com (Yes Laurie, you little snoop, we are now famous!). Denise wrote Dottie requesting permission to use some of her inspirational poems & prayers, (if you haven’t visited her site yet, you owe it to yourself to go take a look). Dotti, Thank you so much for your input, and all the hard work you have put into your site. You are truly an inspiration to us all!!! "Hi Denise: Thank you for your very kind words about my website. It is for all who need it or want it...I believe in making the journey as easy as possible which will in turn make it possible to "stick with the journey". I can't tell you how much it means to me to get emails like yours - it is nice to know the website is appreciated and used! Doing my website, getting emails like yours and meeting others on this journey of ours - keeps me motivated as well! Again, thank you! I love both your sites and will be adding them to my LINKS & REFERENCES page. You may use whatever you wish from ANY of my pages....that is why they are there - for all who need it to use it. I would be honored. I tried to post to your guestbook at your personal site and it wouldn't let me....below is what I was going to post. Hi Denise: ONE DAY AT A TIME, NO GUILT and just MOVE ON when you are having a rough day! YOU CAN DO THIS - I'm rooting for you. Take care and have a wonderful day. Dotti (Dotti's Weight Loss Zone) "The greatest thing you have is the 24 hours you have in front of you. The past is gone, the future is distant. Today you can succeed. Set a goal you can achieve within the next 24 hours." Dotti
Here's something I copied a few months ago. I thought it might be interesting for the newsletter. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I copied it from.
We've been told over an over again that daily weighing is unnecessary, yet many of us can't resist peeking at that number every morning. If you just can't bring yourself to toss the scale in the trash, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that influence it's readings. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. They are not indicators of your success or failure. Once you understand how these mechanisms work, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale. Water makes up about 60% of total body mass. Normal fluctuations in the body's water content can send scale-watchers into a tailspin if they don't understand what's happening. Two factors influencing water retention are water consumption and salt intake. Strange as it sounds, the less water you drink, the more of it your body retains. If you are even slightly dehydrated your body will hang onto it's water supplies with a vengeance, possibly causing the number on the scale to inch upward. The solution is to drink plenty of water.
A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 mg of sodium. Generally, we should only eat between 1,000 and 3,000 mg of sodium a day, so it's easy to go overboard. Sodium is a sneaky substance. You would expect it to be most highly concentrated in salty chips, nuts, and crackers. However, a food doesn't have to taste salty to be loaded with sodium. A half cup of instant pudding actually contains nearly four times as much sodium as an ounce of salted nuts, 460 mg in the pudding versus 123 mg in the nuts. The more highly processed a food is, the more likely it is to have a high sodium content. That's why, when it comes to eating, it's wise to stick mainly to the basics: fruits, vegetables, lean meat, beans, and whole grains. Be sure to read the labels on canned foods, boxed mixes, and frozen dinners. Women may also retain several pounds of water prior to menstruation. This is very common and the weight will likely disappear as quickly as it arrives. Pre-menstrual water-weight gain can be minimized by drinking plenty of water, maintaining an exercise program, and keeping high-sodium processed foods to a minimum. Another factor that can influence the scale is glycogen. Think of glycogen as a fuel tank full of stored carbohydrate. Some glycogen is stored in the liver and some is stored the muscles themselves. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound and it's packaged with 3-4 pounds of water when it's stored. Your glycogen supply will shrink during the day if you fail to take in enough carbohydrates. As the glycogen supply shrinks you will experience a small imperceptible increase in appetite and your body will restore this fuel reserve along with it's associated water. It's normal to experience glycogen and water weight shifts of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level. These fluctuations have nothing to do with fat loss, although they can make for some unnecessarily dramatic weigh-ins if you're prone to obsessing over the number on the scale. Otherwise rational people also tend to forget about the actual weight of the food they eat. For this reason, it's wise to weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you've had anything to eat or drink. Swallowing a bunch of food before you step on the scale is no different than putting a bunch of rocks in your pocket. The 5 pounds that you gain right after a huge dinner is not fat. It's the actual weight of everything you've had to eat and drink. The added weight of the meal will be gone several hours later when you've finished digesting it.
This brings us to the scale's sneakiest attribute. It doesn't just weigh fat. It weighs muscle, bone, water, internal organs and all. When you lose "weight," that doesn't necessarily mean that you've lost fat. In fact, the scale has no way of telling you what you've lost (or gained). Losing muscle is nothing to celebrate. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns, even when you're just sitting around. That's one reason why a fit, active person is able to eat considerably more food than the dieter who is unwittingly destroying muscle tissue. Robin Landis, author of "Body Fueling," compares fat and muscles to feathers and gold. One pound of fat is like a big fluffy, lumpy bunch of feathers, and one pound of muscle is small and valuable like a piece of gold. Obviously, you want to lose the dumpy, bulky feathers and keep the sleek beautiful gold. The problem with the scale is that it doesn't differentiate between the two. It can't tell you how much of your total body weight is lean tissue and how much is fat. There are several other measuring techniques that can accomplish this, although they vary in convenience, accuracy, and cost. Skin-fold calipers pinch and measure fat folds at various locations on the body, hydrostatic (or underwater) weighing involves exhaling all of the air from your lungs before being lowered into a tank of water, and bioelectrical impedance measures the degree to which your body fat impedes a mild electrical current. If the thought of being pinched, dunked, or gently zapped just doesn't appeal to you, don't worry. The best measurement tool of all turns out to be your very own eyes. How do you look? How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Are your rings looser? Do your muscles feel firmer? These are the true measurements of success. If you are exercising and eating right, don't be discouraged by a small gain on the scale. Fluctuations are perfectly normal. Expect them to happen and take them in stride. It's a matter of mind over scale.
Better Homes and Gardens New Dieter's Cookbook List Price $34.95, Sam's Club $18.95, Amazon $24.47
I purchased this cookbook 2 years ago and still enjoy it! It lives up to its promise that you can eat well, feel great and lose weight. I was initially drawn to the book because it lists nutrition facts and exchanges per serving for every recipe. I was able to take my points finder and show the points per serving for each recipe. The nutrition facts show calories, total fat (saturated fat), cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, fiber and protein per serving. The exchanges are helpful when trying to make sure to spread the points across the food groups. I have cooked meals from this book for company who had no clue that these meals have been "diet" food. Need I mention that my husband and sons also don't know? The cookbook is beautifully bound with in hardback with 480 pages. It begins with an introduction that gives hints for healthy living, eating and moving. It has a 14-day menu plan. There are recipes for calorie-trimmed classics, appetizers to desserts, breakfast to dinner, beef and veal to meatless main dishes and main dish salads. Every recipe has a pretty color picture with it, one recipe per page. Very classy cookbook! Here's a review I copied from the Amazon site: Reviewer: A reader from Loudonville NY March 23, 1999 I bought this cookbook in an earlier edition and thought the recipes looked interesting but hadn't really tried many. Then my husband and I joined Weight Watchers, and I began to try more and more of the recipes. We have not had any that we did not like. They are relatively simple and use ingredients that we usually have on hand. The nutrition information makes it easy to convert to the Weight Watchers point system, and the portions are reasonable. I now own many low fat cookbooks, but I still return to this one at least once a week. It is starting to get stained and battered, which is the best recommendation for any cookbook.
I Wish I Were A Bear (author
unknown)
9. Make sure you're getting five servings
of fruits and vegetables per day
AND NOW THE NEWS WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!! Drum Roll Maestro Please
TO DATE, THE TOTAL POUNDS
LOST BETWEEN HALLOWEEN AND THE FIRST WEIGH-IN AFTER THE NEW YEAR IS:
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Why
The Scale Lies
Excess
salt (sodium) can also play a big role in water retention.
Exercise
physiologists tell us that in order to store one pound of fat, you need
to eat 3,500 calories more than your body is able to burn. In other words,
to actually store the above dinner as 5 pounds of fat, it would have to
contain a whopping 17,500 calories. This is not likely, in fact it's not
humanly possible. So when the scale goes up 3 or 4 pounds overnight, rest
easy, it's likely to be water, glycogen, and the weight of your dinner.
Keep in mind that the 3,500 calorie rule works in reverse also. In order
to lose one pound of fat you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you
take in. Generally, it's only possible to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week.
When you follow a very low calorie diet that causes your weight to drop
10 pounds in 7 days, it's physically impossible for all of that to be
fat. What you're really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle.
BOOK
REVIEW by NAYLENE
A
LITTLE HUMOR FROM KBT J
15
Tips for Breaking through a Plateau - Part 2