Now don’t get excited, because we don’t mean drinking alcohol. But there are some proven drinks that really can help people lose weight. They can rev up a sluggish metabolism, curb cravings, and even provide some nutrients we need. So here are some ways to sip yourself thinner.

Water – You know you really are supposed to drink 8 glasses a day, but you probably don’t. It has been scientifically proven, again and again, to help people lose weight.  People who drink more water have higher metabolisms, and also report better focus and higher energy levels. Sometimes we also tend to think we are hungry when we are really just thirsty. Many weight loss programs urge participants to keep a nice cold glass or bottle of water on them all of the time. Aim for 2 quarts a day, but try to drink at least a quart a day!

If pounds are creeping up, just try to drink more water every day to see if it helps.

Smoothies- Now you have to be careful, because many i that are pre-made can have a lot of sugar and fat. But if you make your own yogurt based smoothie with fresh fruit and ice, you can do yourself a lot of good! Some experts suggest adding a little flax or whey protein to your mix too. Smoothies are pretty easy to make if you have  a decent blender, but they take awhile to drink. The dairy protein and other nutrients may help keep you feeling full and curb cravings too. I find the very satisfying, and they tend to keep me away from processed sweets.

Experts actually advice people to try drinking 2 – 3 sensibly made smoothies a day.

Coffee- If you are a coffee drinker, try to stay away from many  pre-made coffee  drinks. They can pack in tons of fat and sugar. A cup of coffee has virtually no calories. If you add a bit of sugar and cream, it is still only about 50 calories. But the average cofee house type blended coffee drink adds hundreds of calories to your menu!

Chocolate Milk - In my opinion, whoever invented chocolate milk should have won the Noble Prize. A glass that is made with skim milk should have about 150 calories. It also comes with lots of great nutrients like vitamin D and calcium and protein. I find it a filling and satisfying snack that reduces my craving for higher calorie and less healthy snacks. A glass of chocolate skim milk  is one guilty pleasure that I do not have to feel guilty about. 

Chocolate soy milk is pretty good too, and you can find some lighter varieties that are only about 70 calories a glass!

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Well, it is that time of year again when the stores are beginning to feature skimpier summer clothes. It can be a tough time if you put on a few pounds over the winter, or if you never really got started on that New Year’s resolution to shed some weight.

Many peope who really are good at sticking to a diet use a few tricks to help them along. It is so easy to let those calories creep on without really feeling like we are overeating. And once those calories turn into extra weight, it is anything but easy to get it off again.

Our Best Weight Loss Tips

• Get the salad first. If you are eating out or in, a low calorie salad can be a great way to curb your appetitie later.  Try to keep a nice salad prepared in the fridge at home so you will aways have it to start your meals with. A salad can also make a great snack, and it may keep you from reaching for the bag of cookies.
• Enjoy more fruit. Most of us do not eat enough of it, and fruit is mostly the good kind of carbs with fiber and lots of nutrients. Learn to enjoy a bunch of grapes of ripe banana again. It will be great if you can replace unhealthy snacks with fresh fruit. For breakfast, why not try sliced bananas in skin or soy milk? It’s great.
• Get Enough Sleep. This may seem counter-intuitive, but studies have shown that one symptom of sleep deprivation may be weight gain! Besides, we’re not eating when we’re sleeping!
• Activity. I don’t like to exercise that much either, but I do try to get some activity in every day. It really makes all the difference in the world for me. I am sure it speeds up my metabolism and helps reduce food cravings.  One day you might take a half hour walk, and the next day you could spend that half hour mopping the floors, pushing a vacuum, and dusting. Just try not to sit in your chair all day!
• Have healthy snacks you like on hand. Some baby carrots and low fat Ranch dressing can be a diet saver.  Celery and low fat cream cheese is yummy and filling. You get the idea. If all you have in the fridge is chocolate cake and hot dogs, it can really be tempting to eat too much when you are hungry.  I, myself, am a big fan of lower calorie soy milk. The fiber and protein makes it a filing snack, and I really like it!
• Weigh Yourself. I don’t think that most people have a clear idea of how much they weigh without a scale. You can weigh yourself every day or once a week, but make yourself accountable or you will probably not do so well on any diet.

Do you have any secret tips that help you lose weight. You can register for free to submit your comments you know. We love feedback.

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It seemed like every time I got online, I would see ads that said I could get a flat stomach, lose weight, etc. if I would only obey one simple rule. The blogs, like Jen’s Weight Loss, Karen’s Weight Loss, etc. would show before and after pictures of a woman who lost her sagging belly and now looked really hot!  I suspect that most of these before and after photos were purchased from stock photo services, and the owner of the blog was not the person in the picture!

Obviously this did not work out well for thousands of consumers who took advantage of the not-so-free offer and ended up with rebill charges on their credit cards that were quite hard to cancel.

Sometimes the so-called blogs would also proclaim that famous personalities like Oprah, Dr. Oz, and Rachel Ray endorsed the product. This did not work out well either as some of these celebs are busy with their lawsuits against offending advertisers.

Anyway, at best, a lot of these so-called weight loss blogs were fairly deceptive. At worst, they could be called scams.

Jen’s Car Insurance Blog?

What in the world does this have to do with auto insurance?

A car insurance website decided to have some fun with this whole concept. Believe me, I know that it does get hard to come up with new ideas to write about a dry subject like insurance sometimes. The page is obviously a joke, but the car insurance quote form is real.

Visit here for a smile, or maybe even to save money on car insurance! Jen’s Car Insurance Blog

Any thoughts on this? We’d love to read your comments. You can register for free to comment.

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It may seem amazing that the perfect diet food has been under our noses the whole time. But more and more health experts are praising many kinds of soup as great diet foods. The aims of these diets could be good health, weight loss, detoxification, etc. Of course, not all types of soup will pass the test, but many will!

Note that I am not promoting any fad soup diets. I am simply suggesting that eating a couple of bowls of soup a day, instead of other snacks or side dishes, will help your diet. Even Weight Watchers promotes Wendy’s Chile as a good food choice for people who want to lose weight. The high fiber, high protein, and lower calorie count make chile a good diet food!

Soup For Weight Loss

Many studies have shown that our brains tend to judge how satisfying our daily diets are by the weight and volume of the food we eat. Since soup contains a lot of water, we can convince our bodies that we have eaten a lot of food, even if we have not taken in a lot of calories. Most of us tend to fall off of our diet wagons because we feel hungry and unsatisfied. But if we can add a cup of soup, snack on soup, or even make soup the center of the meal, we can keep ourselves happy while eating less.

Now some cream based soups may add a lot of calories. You may have to balance the calories vs. the actual nutrients. And you can find a lot of lower calorie substitues for many classics. But most classic soups pack a lot of punch for the calories they contribute to your diet.

Soup For Detoxification

Many kinds of soup are perfect to keep our bodies flushed out. Combine high fiber soups with beans and whole grains with a high water content. You have a perfect recipe for good digestion!

Chicken Soup is Good For The Body and Soul!

Scientists are now confirming what your mom and grandma already knew. Chicken soup may be good medicine. A team at the University of Nebraska found that chicken soup contains ingredients that help us feel better and get healthy.  Of course, the scientists did not discount the impact of the TLC we get when somebody makes us a bowl of soup.

Fast and Easy Diet Potato Soup Recipe

I think it is pretty easy to find a chicken soup of vegetable soup recipe that contains few calories. But creamy potato soup has got to be one of my all time favorite comfort foods. I wanted to find a way to prepare it that was really simple, tasted good, and would be guilt free!

You need: One large potato, 1 cup of skim milk, pepper to taste, salt, other seasonings to taste,  imitation bacon bits or turkey bacon (a couple of slices or equiv.), 1/3 cup cheese (you can use low fat cheese), 1 tsp. of butter cooking spray).

You do:

• Mash the potato. You can mirowave it for about 5 minutes or boil it.
• Cook the bacon if you use it. Then crumble it up. Imitation bacon bits will already be crumbled.
• In a large bowl, mash in the milk. Add salt and pepper to taste. You may also add some other herbs like rosemary to taste.
• Warm up the mix again. Before you serve it sprinkle on the butter, cheese, and bacon.

• Enjoy!

Do you have any other healthy soup ideas?

 Please register and put them in the comments. We do have to approve commets, but we’d love to publish any of your good ideas!

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Well, if you have been to the grocery store lately, you know that you can select from dozens of foods with labels that advertise them as “LITE”, “DIET”, “LOW CARB”, “LOW FAT”, or “LOW CALORIE”. But since we Americans have a weight problem, and since we buy a lot of these so-called diet foods, we have to ask if diet foods work!

Diet Foods That Do Work

Doctors are studying the types of diets that actually help people stay healthy, feel satisfied, and keep weight in control. They do have some ideas about these type of foods, but it seems like we are not hearing them.

• High Water Content Food – It may seem obvious that fruits and vegetables contain a lot of water. What may not be so obvious is that they can really satisfy us without adding a lot of calories. They also provide essential minerals and vitamins. What we need to do is concentrate on making these types of food the bulk of our diets, while eating other foods as side dishes. A proper meal should have vegetables as the main dish, while the protein and starch should be the side dishes.
• High Fiber Food – If you can replace some high fat dishes with high fiber dishes, you will be doing your diet a favor. Add some low fat beans to your taco meat. You will keep protein, reduce fat, and increase fiber. Of course, make sure those tacos have a liberal sprinkling of lettuce, tomatos and green peppers. You can still enjoy the same sized portion while reducing your calories.
• Fruit is Just Dessert – Think about how many sweet grapes or berries you can eat for the same calories as a candy bar or slice of cake. You will probably not even want to eat that many grapes because the serving would be so large. You will still satisfy your sweet tooth, take in minerals and vitamins, and do your diet another favor.
• Chocolate as Diet Food – Do you have chocolate cravings? Try replacing a candy bar with a tall glass of low fat chocolate milk or a big mug of hot cocoa. You will drink your chocolate, take in a lower amount of calories, and satisfy your food cravings. The milk also provides essential vitamins and minerals.

Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Too!

You should still enjoy your favorite foods, just try to think about it another way. If you like the pizza buffet, try to start off with a big salad. You will find that taking 10 minutes to enjoy a nice salad will probably reduce the amount of pizza you want later. A large salad and a couple of meduim sized slices of pizza is not a bad meal choice. Skipping the salad and having a while pizza may not be a prudent way to lose weight.

Lab studies have demonstrated tha people tend to eat food by weight every day. That is, no matter what sort of food people eat, they automatically tend to take portions by weight. But a portion of pasta that is covered with a meat and cheese sauce will weight the same as a portion that has been seeded with diced vegetables. People in the studies ate the same weight of food either way, but the people with the “vegie” sauce consumed less caloires.

The diet foods that work are usually the natural foods that your own mom told you to finish. It just seems like common sense to choose diet food, because that is actually what it is.

Some people find that negative calorie noodles help them too. These are made from Japanese konnyaku roots, and contain mostly fiber and water so they do not add calories to a diet.

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Most of us do not make it to middle age without having to battle our weight at some point. Let me start out by saying that I believe the key to reaching a healthy weight is getting some physical activity in every day. The activity does not have to be training for a marathon either. Some people do very well by taking a walk, riding an exercise bike, or even cleaning the house. You can vary your activity just so you get something in almost every day!

Do Low Carb Diets Work?

Well, I think they do work. And one comment I made about being on a low carb diet was that after the first few days, I felt as if I was eating less food, and not more food. This is despite that fact that as long as I kept my carb count under 30 – 60 grams a day (Protein Power Diet), I did not have to limit the amount I ate.

Insulin and Appetitie Control With Low Carb Diets

But I found that the food I could eat was satisfying, and that I did not have food cravings. A prevention magazine article actually published a scientific study that seems to agree with me. They had subjects confined to a hospital ward, and then they measured their calorie intake on a regular diet vs. a low carb diet. When the subjects were on a low carb diet, they could eat as much as they wanted as long as they kept their carb count under 21 grams (Atkins Induction).

The subjects actually reduced the amount of calories they ate every day. I believe that, for me, a low carb diet helps reduce food cravings, especially after the first day or two. I might eat a lot the first couple of days, but then I sort of, forget about food unless I am hungry.

So I don’t think that most dieters who stick to a low carbohydrate diet plan actually eat lots of food and lots of fat. I think they actually use their diet to reduce food cravings and suppress their appetites so they end up eating less.

I’d love to read any comments you may have!

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