The Best Recipes for Weight Loss has Three Main Ingredients

[caption id="attachment_52" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Measuring Weight Loss"][/caption]

As someone who loves food and cooking, I prefer to think about weight loss like a recipe. There's no shortage of weight loss recipes being promoted these days. Just take a look down the "diet" aisle of your bookstore and you'll see hundreds of books all promising to solve your weight loss woes, many of them with conflicting approaches. It's totally overwhelming.

After several decades of diet experimentation, I've discovered that with weight  loss, as with most things in life, it's best to keep it simple.  Isn't life complicated enough? How many rules and restrictions can we tolerate before we throw up our hands and give up? Then I realized that the best recipes for losing weight have just three main ingredients - food, fitness, and feeling good.

Food and eating is an important main ingredient in any weight loss plan since the kinds and amounts of food you eat, as well as how you eat, are directly related to weight. It's necessary to eat the foods that energize you in a nourishing way most of the time and make room for indulging in the foods that you love so you never feel deprived. Exactly what, when, how much and how often you eat is a matter of personal choice and experimentation to determine what works best for you.

Fitness is the second important main ingredient in a successful weight loss plan. Your body loves to move, even if your mind thinks otherwise. It was designed to move, so again, the key is to find ways to move that feel good to you. Keep it energizing and fun. Experiment until you find what leaves you feeling great. For me that means lots of brisk walks with my golden retriever and healthy doses of all kinds of yoga from gentle to vigorous. For you it may mean working out with an inspiring DVD, bicycling, swimming or turning up the music and dancing around the
house. 

The third important ingredient - feeling good- might just be the most important one for successful lasting weight loss. And it's the one most often ignored in traditional weight loss plans. It's the magical missing ingredient and once you discover its power your life and weight loss efforts will be so much easier and more enjoyable.

When you begin to focus on feeling good, having fun and adding pleasure to your life instead of dieting, deprivation, restrictions, food charts and working out, your mind and body begin to shift almost immediately.  Try it right now. Say to yourself, "I need to lose weight" and notice how you feel. (If you're like me you may feel stressed, depressed, frustrated, tired, sad, and/or overwhelmed - hardly the right emotions for trying to lose weight.) Now say, "I need to find a way to feel good and have some fun." Notice anything different? (When I say this, I feel like smiling as I sense warmth, happiness, excitement and interest. These are much better emotions
for making something positive - like weight loss - happen.)

When you think about it, it makes so much sense. Shifting your focus from losing weight to feeling good sets you up for success because you are in a happier, less stressful, calm, relaxed state, where weight loss can begin to happen in a way that seems almost effortless. When you feel good, you are much more likely to engage in behaviors that make you feel better - like eating better, getting enough sleep and moving your body in ways that feel good - that will all support your desire for weight  loss.

So, the next time you decide to lose weight, I hope you'll remember that the best recipes have just three ingredients - food, fitness and feeling good - and by focusing on ways to feel good about yourself, your body, your life, your career, and/or your relationships - you will be setting yourself up for success.

[caption id="attachment_49" align="alignleft" width="181" caption="Martha Mckinnon"][/caption]

 Martha McKinnon is a weight loss coach and yoga teacher who believes that eating great and losing weight can be simple and delicious when you take a body-mind-soul
approach. To learn more please visit her website,
"http://www.simple-nourished-living.com   

Simple Nourished Living.  While you are there you can pick up a FREE copy of her first e-cookbooklet of healthy homemade granola bar recipes.

Scientists Reveal Exercise Protects Brain Cells

[caption id="attachment_39" align="aligncenter" width="298" caption="How Exercise Affects Brain Cells"][/caption]

Carl W. Cotman and Nicole C. Berchtold of The University of California, Irvine are among numerous researchers who found evidence that exercise helps you protect the brain cells you have, and it even spurs the growth of new ones. In their 2007 study, Exercise: A Behavioral Intervention to Enhance Brain Health and Plasticity, they report that using your muscles kicks off a remarkable process that allows your body to make more of a chemical called Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This is a substance that actually makes more gray matter.  So what exactly does that have to do with exercise habits, and our mind? It means that when we exercise, we can improve memory, concentration, and thinking skills. Moderate exercise helps our body make the special kind of brain cells that store memory and then get information back when you need it. These cells are found in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that was discovered to be larger in people who exercise regularly. The hippocampus keeps you oriented. It helps you find what you're looking for--everything from your car keys to the roadmap to that highway exit that got by you the first time around.  If you've ever felt more alert during or after some aerobic exercise, it was most likely because your brain got another benefit.

Rehab professional and producer of Functional Fitness Brain Power DVD, Suzanne Andrews states, " we need to approach people living with dimentia differently and focus on helping people achieve to the best of their ability instead of focusing on their disability.   Although it's also best practice to start an anti dementia program as early as age 40,it's never too late to begin."

Suzanne Andrews, host of Functional Fitness on PBS TV and producer of Brain Power DVD  



instructs you with specially formulated cognition enhancing movements  designed to enhance the right side and left side of your brain and get your blood circulating quickly. The faster your heart pumps it, the faster it gets to your brain. That means both oxygen and glucose arrive right when you need them. Your brain is fueled up, so you get a little jolt.   Brain Power is, in fact, so effective in improving mental focus that it is often part of a treatment plan for people who have attention deficit disorder, dementia, memory loss and alzheimer's.  Brain Power DVD is most valuable to mental function because of its effect upon the frontal and pre-frontal lobes. These areas of the brain help you to solve problems, prioritize tasks, and react to situations quickly. By doing this 25 minute session, you can even protect your pre-frontal cells from threats like environmental toxins or injury. These findings are especially promising for elderly people striving to maintain their independent living skills, and to those affected by dementia.

What are your thoughts, concerns on memory loss?   Email us your question or comment in the box below.