To establish a healthy lifestyle you need to address the following aspects of your life, create strategies to deal with them, and consistently carry out those strategies until they become habit. The aspects to address are...

• What you eat
• Physical activity
• Mental health

The following information explains many ways to address these aspects in order to achieve a healthy lifestyle. We suggest reviewing this information from time to time to refresh your memory and track your progress

In addition to the information in this section, we also recommend reading the following:

Taking Control of your Life
A section of bodyteen that will help you succeed at anything including weightloss.

Negative Calorie Diet
An 80 page eBook with invaluable information including…

• List of more than 100 negative-calorie foods easily found in most grocery stores that require your body to burn more colories during digestion than the amount of calories in the food.
• List of foods that speed up your metabolism
• Three simple exercises you can perform for as little as 15 minutes 3 times a week that firm up and tone 85% of your body's muscles.
• Breathing techniques that speed up your metabolism.
• How to set and achieve goals
• How to permanently change habits
• Mouth watering negative calorie recipes.

This eBook is very inexpensive for the amount of useful information it contains. It’s satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. And it does adhere to our advice, in that it will help you achieve and maintain a healthier lifestyle for lasting results.

Good Luck. You really can do it!

Avoid the Following...

• Fried foods
• Fast food restaurants
• Alcohol: In addition to extra calories, alcoholic drinks inhibit the burning of fats from fat deposits.
• Sweets, whether natural or artificial: Sweets are high in calories, increase appetite and slow down digestion. Sugar triggers body chemicals that promote the passage of fat from the bloodstream into fat cells. Some scientists believe our cravings for sweets originated as a survival mechanism to increase storage of fats, so we could survive long periods without food. Well today, food is everywhere and it's completely unnecessary and unhealthy to store fats.
• Saturated fats: butter, cream, gravies, ice cream, mayonnaise, fatty meats, rich dressings and whole milk. Banana chips have 8 grams of saturated fat per ounce, which is 5 grams more than potato chips! "Don't drown your food" is good way to avoid saturated fats.
• Eating before bedtime and at night: This will make you hungrier the next day. In addition, your metabolism slows down while you sleep allowing food eaten late at night to pack your fat cells.
• Chewing gum: It makes you hungry.
• Grocery shopping on an empty stomach: You'll tend to buy more high-calorie foods.

Smart Tips for Losing Weight

Eat 3 square meals a day If you skip meals and snack instead you will eat more calories than you would have had you eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well-balanced meals supply you with the nutrients essential for a healthy fat burning metabolism.

Don't skip breakfast Eating breakfast will make you eat less the rest of the day. It also jump-starts your metabolism in the morning.

Make lunch your main meal, not dinner Your metabolism is working more efficiently at lunchtime.

When eating, put less food on your plate, chew slowly, and stop eating as soon as you are no longer hungry. If you've consumed a well-rounded meal, don't wait until you're full to stop eating.

Eat more protein to encourage fat burning Proteins can increase your metabolic rate by as much as 30% and help to mobilize stored fat. Good healthy sources of protein include...

• Plain baked potato
• Broiled or baked (not fried) skinless turkey or chicken
• Whitefish

Eat one meal entirely composed of fruits and veggies Low calorie examples are broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, green beans, lettuce, onions, radish, spinach, apples, cantaloupe, grapefruit, strawberries and watermelon. Eat the following higher calorie foods in moderation: bananas, cherries, corn, figs, grapes, green peas, pears, pineapple, sweet potatoes, white rice, and yams.

Wear a tight belt and avoid loose concealing clothes that allow you to easily gain more weight. Were not talking spandex. Just something that fits snuggly around your waist.

Use appropriate portions Limit your helpings to less than a quarter of your plate. For example: A serving of cooked chicken should equal the size of a deck of cards, the average closed fist, or approximately 3 oz.

Don't judge a food by its label Read the fine print. Check the calories, saturated and unsaturated fats. Many foods that seem low in calories are not. Turkey burgers are made with dark meat consisting of twice as much fat as a hamburger with lean beef. Like we mentioned before, banana chips have 8 grams of saturated fat per ounce, 5 grams more than potato chips.

To add flavor without fat use mustard, hot sauce, chili powder, balsamic vinegar, salsa and horseradish.

Keep track of calories. Counting calories is more important than counting fat, protein or carbos, when you're trying to lose weight. Multiply your weight in pounds by 10. Add 30% This is your daily dose of calories. With a moderate activity level, consuming less than this number daily should allow you to lose weight. Consuming this amount daily should keep you from gaining. Each pound of body fat is equal to 3500 calories. So to lose one pound in a week: divide 3500 calories by 7 days, which equals 500. Thus you need to eat 500 calories less than your daily dose each day for a week to lose one pound of fat. If you do this each week for a year you will lose 52 pounds. See Calorie Busters and Food Suggestions for ways to limit calories.

Take control of your body now! The more fat you gain, the harder it is to lose weight. It takes more calories to maintain muscle than it takes to maintain fat. Therefore, the higher a person's fat-to-muscle ratio is, the fewer calories are burned and the lower their metabolic rate is. Also, the more you weigh, the more difficult some exercises can be. The good news is you don't have to do the same exercises as aerobics instructors. See Create Activity.

How to Deal with CRAVINGS

Plan strategies NOW so you'll be prepared when the cravings come.

Replace your cravings with healthier food: Gotta have a snack? Grab some strawberries, cantaloupe or an apple. Fruits and veggies are low in fat and generally lower in calories than meat and junk food.

Eat the food you crave, but take twice as long, and eat half the amount.

Delay yourself from eating for 10 minutes: After a few minutes most cravings go away!

Replace your craving with an activity to occupy your mind: Call a friend. Take the dog for a walk. You might need to just get out of the house and run some arrends.

When you feel a craving coming on between meals, wait ten minutes. Most cravings last only a few minutes.

Don't think you'll satisfy a craving by taking one small bite. The first bite only makes you want more.

If you fold under the pressure of your craving use the same rules for eating meals. Eat slowly, savoring each bite.

When you get a craving note where you are, change your location or activity and avoid that location or activity in the future. Some cravings occur in front of the TV. Others occur in the kitchen or in the food court at the shopping mall. Avoid these places and activities like the plague if they induce cravings.

Avoid sweets and eat complex carbos: If you crave sweets because you're always tired, remember sugar and sweet fruits only offer a short burst of energy followed by further fatigue and a repeated craving for more. For long lasting energy to combat your sweet cravings try foods with complex carbohydrates such as whole grains, peas and beans, instead of simple carbohydrates such as any sweet sugary snack. If you avoid sweets, in time your cravings will disappear. You might be surprised to find that sweets no longer appeal to you compared to other more healthy foods, which make you feel better.

Calorie Busters

Food Suggestions
Check out these delicious, low-fat, high-complex carbohydrates meals. All these tasty delicacies are low in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol.

• Potatoes
• Pasta
• Bread
• Corn
• Rice

Address your Emotions
Fear of weight-gain causes weight-gain. People that fear gaining weight, whether this pressure came from their parents, friends or themselves, are more apt to attempt unhealthy dieting. Since this type of dieting is repeatedly attempted and often results in obtaining more weight than one starts with, this fear results in weightgain. If you fall into this category, you need to get to the reason of your fear. Recognize it for what it is, make a list of reasons to tackle this fear, and consciously change your habits.

Make a decision now, to free yourself from this fear by appreciating your inner qualities. If you take time to appreciate the beauty inside you and in your character, your body will naturally follow. If you feel good about yourself, you will treat yourself with a healthy lifestyle.

Some people use weight as a crutch. These people are overweight because somehow deep inside it has a purpose.

• Were you sexually assaulted and now feel that gaining weight will protect you?
• Are you afraid of attention and feel gaining weight will prevent drawing attention?
• As ridiculous as it sounds, do you think of your weight as a friend that doesn't talk back?
• Does eating offer a sense of control, since you can eat whatever you want when you want it?
• Does it act as a temporary fix to your problems?
• Is it a way to ward off potential friends or boyfriends, because you just don't have the time or energy to deal with those additions to your life?
• Does eating ease your mind?
• Is it your way to celebrate?
• Is it your way to entertain yourself?
• Does it provide you with a sense of safety?
• Do you think people will like you less if you lose weight?
• Do you think other people prefer to weigh less than you. Do you think they will remain your friend, as long as you weigh more than them and as long as you don't pose a competitive threat?

Having trouble finding your reason for weight gain? Sit down and look back at your life. Find the periods during which you gained weight, and ask yourself what happened at the time that period began. Think really hard. Check out an old calendar or journal written during that period of time. Be completely honest about your situation when you acquired your eating habits. When you find the answer. Sit down and write the benefits to overeating eating and to your excess weight. Then sit down and write the costs of overeating and of your excess weight. Include the immediate costs, the costs 5 years down the road, 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road. You will find that the costs dramatically outweigh the benefits. You will also find your reasons to lose weight and to adopt a healthier lifestyle. This list is your motivation. Make sure to remind yourself of these costs often.

Change your negative thoughts into positive ones. People with low self-esteem tend to treat their body with little respect. If you focus on...

• "Your failures"
• "How ugly you are"
• "How disgusting you look"
• "How ashamed you are"
• "How powerless you feel"
• "How worthless you are"

...Then you are acting in a very self-damaging way as if you don't deserve a healthy body. This must stop.

Interrupt this pattern. Say "Wait a minute!" my appearance has no bearing on who I am, because who I am inside is the true me.

Who I am inside is vastly larger and more powerful than anything that could happen to me. Use this phrase to overcome any obstacle.

People have sailed around the world, jumped up to 20 ft., ran 100 meters in 9.2 seconds, landed on the moon, retrieved artifacts from the titanic, climbed Mt. Everest. Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president after being imprisoned for 26 years. The potential of every single human is incredible when given the right motivation. As a member of the human species, you have the power within you to transcend. Start by loving yourself now, and enjoy watching your body take strength from your spirit.

The best and only way to successfully and reliably lose weight is... Adopt a healthier more active lifestyle. A natural healthy diet with regular exercise will not only take off the weight but will also give you more energy, make your body stronger and healthier and lower your risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. Make sure you sleep 8 hours a day as well to give you the strength to conquer cravings and to exercise.

Why Fast Diets Don't Work
Almost 95% of all dieters regain their lost weight within a year, because they didn't adopt a healthy lifestyle. Fad diets and crash diets might initially take off weight, but they are very dangerous. Because of this, they cannot be sustained, and as soon as you stop the program the pounds come right back on. Usually, you gain more weight than you started with. Once the weight comes back on, you'll be tempted to crash diet again. Once again you will put your body in danger to briefly lose weight, and then to gain even more weight than you started with. In this way, crash dieting becomes a self-damaging cycle or addiction. Not only is it known to result in obesity, each crash diet you try can damage your health in many ways. Losing weight too quickly can suppress your immune system and increase your risk of heart disease. The rapid weight gain that usually follows a crash diet often results in elevated cholesterol levels and can damage vital organs. People on crash diets are more likely to develop gallstones. One study found that people who drastically or often changed their weight, as crash dieters do, had higher death rates and ran a greater risk of coronary artery disease regardless of how overweight they were. Don't be a slave to unhealthy quick result dieting. Instead, do something that works... (read on)

Bad Diets

The popular Atkin's high-protein low-carbohydrate diet
Starving your body of carbohydrates induces ketosis, a process of burning stored fat for fuel. Vital electrolytes, especially potassium, can be dangerously depleted placing you at high risk for heart arrhythmia or heart attack. Excessive ketosis puts the body in a state of starvation, requiring the body to dissolve its own tissues, including internal organs, for fuel! Plus the accelerated breakdown of body fat releases high levels of toxins into the blood, which are normally trapped in fat. This is why it's important to burn fat gradually.

Starving yourself
This also induces ketosis, and thus carries the same damaging effects on your heart and the rest of your body. As does the Atkin's diet

Weight-loss drugs
All weight-loss and appetite suppressant drugs have side effects, some potentially dangerous. No drug provides a healthy way to lose weight with permanent results as is possible by acquiring a healthy active lifestyle.

Stomach surgery
Any form of invasive surgery should be the last thing you want to do with your body. People don't have surgery unless there is no other solution. It is only recommended if your situation is life-threatening and all other options have failed.

Create activity
Standup, raise your arms, breath deeply, move that body, honey! Being physically active is being physically active whether you're walking, shooting hoops, playing ping pong, jogging, etc. Not everyone can exercise the same way. Depending on the shape you're starting out in, you must ease into exercise with an activity that fits you. Simply standing out of your chair, shifting weight from one leg to the other and swinging your arms burns five times more calories than sitting down! Remember, exercise becomes more and more enjoyable the more you do it, just like sex! If you try an exercise and don't enjoy it, do not jump to the conclusion that it's not for you. The more you do it, the less painful and more rewarding and enjoyable it might become.

There's a reason people are more over weight today than people twenty years ago. It's because people twenty years ago didn't have television, cable, video games, personal computers, home shopping, the internet, and all the other stationary activities you can do today. There was nothing you could do that allowed you to sit alone stagnant in one spot while your attention was engrossed in a computer screen. People went outside to play instead of going downstairs to the chair in front of the television. So to get your blood pumping and your calories burning, stand up and find a fun activity you enjoy that moves your body. Here's a list of possibilities starting with those that seem the most effortless and ending with those that require physical strength but offer a great time.

• For those who find walking difficult, start with standing and water aerobics.
• Stand while painting
• Stand while playing guitar or some other instrument
• Stand while cooking a beautiful healthy meal
• Get a cordless head set phone and walk and/or swing your arms while talking
• Water aerobics classes are offered at your local fitness center or YMCA
• Shopping
• Ping pong
• Casual walking
• Swimming
• Snorkeling
• Scuba diving
• Speed walking
• Shooting hoops in the driveway
• Rollerblading
• Jogging
• Canoeing
• Sailing (take a class or join a sailing club)
• Softball
• Kayaking
• Snowboarding (very physical)
• Aerobic dancing
• Half court basketball
• Full court basketball
• Hiking
• Rock climbing

For those of you who absolutely need to lose weight, do something that requires you to support your body weight. Biking does not qualify, because the bike, instead of your legs, is supporting your weight. Your goal is to eventually workout aerobically 30 to 40 minutes a day and weight lift (Nautilus, Hammerstrength, free weights, etc.) 2 days a week for 20 to 30 minutes. This is the best way to lose weight. If you can't do this now, don't worry. Just start where you feel comfortable and get active!

It Is Possible for You to Lose Weight
Everyone has the strength inside to do it. They just need to tap that strength and get started. Whether it means going for a walk whenever the urge to watch television arises or joining a sports team. Start easy with small changes in your behavior until they become habit. Associate the television, video games, couch and the lazy boy recliner chair to being overweight. Associate activities outside to feeling better about yourself. You can do it!

The Best Diet Plans
Crash dieting or quick result dieting does not work. The pounds might temporarily come off, but studies have shown that after two years, most people weigh at least two pounds more than they did before they began dieting. The only way to diet successfully is to take off the pounds slowly while exercising and adopting a healthier lifestyle. Adopting a healthy lifestyle means...

• Exercising more
• Avoiding lethargic activities
• Eating three healthy meals a day
• Eating plenty of vegetables and fruits
• Avoiding foods high in fat
• Drinking plenty of water
• Facing the reason you gained wait initially, and loving the person you are instead of dwelling on what physical traits you are unhappy with.

The following are the only dieting plans recommended by Bodyteen.com:

Negative Calorie Diet
(As mentioned before) An 80 page eBook with invaluable information including…

• List of more than 100 negative-calorie foods easily found in most grocery stores that require your body to burn more colories during digestion than the amount of calories in the food.
• List of foods that speed up your metabolism
• Three simple exercises you can perform for as little as 15 minutes 3 times a week that firm up and tone 85% of your body's muscles.
• Breathing techniques that speed up your metabolism.
• How to set and achieve goals
• How to permanently change habits
• Mouth watering negative calorie recipes.

This eBook is very inexpensive for the amount of useful information it contains. It’s satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. And it does adhere to our advice, in that it will help you achieve and maintain a healthier lifestyle for lasting results.

Volumetrics A book by Barbara Rolls, Ph.D. & Robert A. Burnett, published by Harper Collins
Cost: $ 24
This is the healthiest diet available. It provides you with well-balanced meals. Just remember to exercise too! The main concept is to fill you up on foods with a high volume of air and water while still providing the nutrients you need.

Dieting for Dummies A book by Jane Kirby, RD for the American Dietic Association, published by IDG Books
Cost: $20
This book provides a wealth of information, including lists of foods that are good for you and low in fat and many tips and tricks to living a healthy life while dieting. You can use this knowledge for the rest of your life to ensure a healthy lifestyle.

Weight Watchers
Cost: $20 to join, $14 per week
1-800-651-6000
www.weightwatchers.com
Weight watchers does not go out of its way to ensure you're getting all the nutrients you need. However it does provide terrific group support. You have more freedom for what you eat and the program does give you incentive to exercise. Calories are easily watched using a system of points assigned to specific foods and exercises. You keep track of your daily points, as you eat and exercise, and share your progress with a support group. The program encourages exercise, provides group support that can be very empowering, is very successful providing long lasting results, and easy to follow since you keep track of points instead of counting thousands of calories a day. In order to keep this plan as healthy as possible, you should remember to vary your foods throughout the day and be sure to include a well balanced diet at each meal. Even though eating 3 pizza slices for breakfast lunch and dinner might be allowed by your point system, it wouldn't be the healthiest choice.

Jenny Craig Weight Management Program
Cost $30 - $350 initial fee
1-800-JENNY-2000
www.jennycraig.com
This program provides counselor support but allows less freedom. You're required to eat packaged foods provided by the program until you've lost half of the weight you intend to lose. You then watch your calories until you've reached your goal weight.

The Slim Fast Plan
Replacing breakfast and lunch with shakes and bars while eating a sensible dinner is actually a pretty good diet plan relative to most diets and carries with it long lasting results. The only problems are boredom, which comes with eating the same thing for two meals everyday, a complete lack of fiber, which you need to boost your immune system and to reduce cancer and heart disease, and no motivation to exercise. Still compared to all the other diets available, the Slim Fast plan is relatively healthy, especially when used with an exercise program. Make sure to eat vegetables that provide fiber in addition to the slim fast shakes or bars. You may want to substitute part of a Slim Fast meal with fruits and vegetables.

How do genetics effect my weight?
An "obesity gene" has been found in mice that is very similar to a gene in our DNA. Evidence suggests that some people are born with certain genes that give them "a disposition toward obesity." All this means is that they simply have the ability to become over weight. It does not mean they will become overweight. It does not mean they can't control their weight. The two reasons people become overweight is the atmosphere they live in and the actions or behaviors they take. A person who has the genes for obesity that lives in a house with only healthy food will not become obese. A person who has the genes for obesity that makes a habit of eating three square meals a day and who is physically active will not become obese. Remember, regardless of what genes you have, you are in control of your own life!