25 Little Tips for Big Weight Loss, Part 1

1. Good things come in small pack­ages.
Here’s a trick for stay­ing sat­is­fied with­out con­sum­ing large por­tions: Chop high-calorie foods like cheese and choco­late into smaller pieces. It will seem like you’re get­ting more than you actu­ally are.

2. Get “water-wise.“
Make a habit of reach­ing for a glass of water instead of a high-fat snack. It will help your over­all health as well as your waist­line. So drink up! Add some zest to your six to eight glasses a day with a twist of lemon or lime.

3. Herb it up.
Stock up your spice rack, and start grow­ing a small herb gar­den in your kitchen win­dow. Spices and herbs add fan­tas­tic fla­vor to foods with­out adding fat or calories.

4. Slim down your soup.
Make a big batch of soup and refrig­er­ate it before you eat it. As it cools, the fat will rise to the top and can be skimmed off the surface.

5. Doggie-bag that din­ner.
At restau­rants that you know serve large por­tions, ask the waiter to put half of your main course in a take-home box before bring­ing it to your table. Putting the food away before you start your meal will help you prac­tice por­tion control.

6. Lis­ten to your crav­ings.
If you’re crav­ing some­thing sweet, eat some­thing sweet—just opt for a health­ier snack (like fruit) instead of a high-calorie one like ice cream. The same goes for crunchy cravings—for exam­ple, try air-popped pop­corn instead of high-fat chips. It’s just smart substitution!

7. Ease your way into pro­duce.
If you’re new to eat­ing lots of fruits and veg­eta­bles, start slowly. Just add them to the foods you already enjoy. Pile salad veg­gies into your sand­wiches, or add fruit to your cereal.

8. Look for high-fat hints.
Want an easy way to iden­tify high-calorie meals? Keep an eye out for these words: au gratin, parmi­giana, tem­pura, alfredo, creamy and car­bonara, and enjoy them in moderation.

9. Don’t multi-task while you eat.
If you’re work­ing, read­ing or watch­ing TV while you eat, you won’t be pay­ing atten­tion to what’s going into your mouth—and you won’t be enjoy­ing every bite. Today, every time you have a meal, sit down. Chew slowly and pay atten­tion to fla­vors and tex­tures. You’ll enjoy your food more and eat less.

10. Taste some­thing new.
Broaden your food repertoire—you may find you like more healthy foods than you knew. Try a new fruit or veg­etable (ever had plan­tain, pak choi, star­fruit or papaya?).

Happy Summer Solstice!

By Dan Schoolfield, Atlanta Cycling | Exam​iner​.com

The long awaited sum­mer sol­stice is finally here today, June 21st. With the sun ris­ing at 6:25am and set­ting at 9:00pm we get the ben­e­fit of nearly 15 hours of day­light. As a mat­ter of fact, every day this week will be within a sec­ond or two of the same. This means that Atlanta cyclists have plenty of time to get a nice hour + ride in every­day after work. If you have to work late, you should be able to get your ride in early, before work. This is not to say that night rid­ing is out of the ques­tion, how­ever, for the major­ity of rid­ers in Atlanta, there is def­i­nitely a pref­er­ence to day­light rid­ing on the longest day of the year.

To shed some light on the tra­di­tional Amer­i­can sum­mer sol­stice cel­e­bra­tion, there is no bet­ter place to look than to our good friends, the Pueblo in Ari­zona. The west­ern most mem­ber of this peo­ple is the Hopi Indi­ans. One of their biggest fes­ti­vals of the year takes place in Oraibi which is the old­est Hopi vil­lage on the third mesa.

To grow crops in their semi-arid land, the Hopi believe they must cul­ti­vate the favor of the spir­its who have power over nature and weather. The fes­ti­val in June accen­tu­ates how impor­tant the favor of these spir­its is for all plant life, espe­cially the sacred corn. The hopes of the peo­ple rely on the corn receiv­ing the spe­cial bless­ing of rain to sup­port its growth to maturity.

Each June, on the longest day of the year the katchi­nas will appear from their cloud homes to be among the peo­ple and renew the pow­ers of fer­til­ity and rain. Pre­cisely at sun­rise on the dance day, the katchi­nas appear and pro­ceed in sin­gle file to the plaza, bring­ing gifts of food to the peo­ple — sym­bols of what the com­ing har­vest will bring.

Even though his ori­gin is some­what uncer­tain, Kokopelli is con­sid­ered the most well-known of the Hopi spir­its. Accord­ing to their lore he rep­re­sents the spirit of fer­til­ity. His image can be found carved into rock through­out the four cor­ners region. Due to the fas­ci­na­tion that the Kokopelli has had on the moun­tain bik­ing enthu­si­asts of this region, many peo­ple have begun to iden­tify his image with cycling in gen­eral. In fact, there is even a 142 mile net­work of desert cycling trails that bears his name. The Kokopelli Trail con­nects the trails of Fruita and Moab, mak­ing it the regions most famous and exten­sive trail sys­tem. The net­work was cre­ated by con­nect­ing a vari­ety of dif­fer­ing trails that include sin­gle­track, sandy roads, dirt roads, occa­sional mud roads, and even some pavement.

While we do not have a desert trail adorned with ancient Kokopelli carv­ings in Atlanta, we do have 15 hours of day­light to ride in cel­e­bra­tion of the sum­mer sol­stice. We can cer­tainly ride the route most con­ve­nient to us while giv­ing thanks to what­ever spirit that moves us. Whether that be Kokopelli, or just our own spirit of adven­ture that reminds us to get out­side away from our com­puter, TV, and iPad and ride our bike for the pure joy that has inspired us to do since we were 5 years old. It will take us back to a sim­pler time when the pri­mary direc­tive from our par­ents was the usual “Just be home before it gets dark.” A time when spon­ta­neously chas­ing the sun’s golden ray could make life so easy to endure!

Happy Trails!

Abnormally Awesome Abs

This morning’s “Abnor­mal” work­out is a tough — but really effec­tive — workout.

It takes a lot of hard work to com­plete that work­out, espe­cially in the speed you all did it. You should be proud of all you’ve accom­plished in just 3 days… give your­self a well-earned pat on the back!

Remem­ber to find time to stretch through­out the day. It will help reduce the risk of injury and reduce any mus­cle soreness.

Here’s a great ab stretch and a smart idea! While enjoy­ing your must-see TV this evening, get up dur­ing each com­mer­cial break and stretch out those abs…

1. Kneel on the floor with your back straight.
2. Place your hands on your lower back and gen­tly bend your upper body back. You should feel the stretch in your abdomen. Keep your abs engaged so as not to put stress on your lower back.
3. Hold for 8 to 10 sec­onds. Repeat.

What is your favorite ab stretch? Share your thoughts by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post!

Stretch Info and Photo Credit: Ray & Terry’s

Don’t Let Your Brain Sabotage Your Success

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Med­ical Writer

Uh-oh, the new year’s just begun and already you’re find­ing it hard to keep those res­o­lu­tions to junk the junk food, get off the couch or kick smok­ing. There’s a bio­log­i­cal rea­son a lot of our bad habits are so hard to break — they get wired into our brains.

That’s not an excuse to give up. Under­stand­ing how unhealthy behav­iors become ingrained has sci­en­tists learn­ing some tricks that may help good habits replace the bad.

“Why are bad habits stronger? You’re fight­ing against the power of an imme­di­ate reward,” says Dr. Nora Volkow, direc­tor of the National Insti­tute on Drug Abuse and an author­ity on the brain’s plea­sure pathway.

It’s the fudge vs. broc­coli choice: Chocolate’s yum fac­tor tends to beat out the knowl­edge that stick­ing with veg­gies brings an even­tual reward of lost pounds.

“We all as crea­tures are hard-wired that way, to give greater value to an imme­di­ate reward as opposed to some­thing that’s delayed,” Volkow says.

Just how that bit of hap­pi­ness turns into a habit involves a pleasure-sensing chem­i­cal named dopamine. It con­di­tions the brain to want that reward again and again — rein­forc­ing the con­nec­tion each time — espe­cially when it gets the right cue from your environment.

Peo­ple tend to over­es­ti­mate their abil­ity to resist temp­ta­tions around them, thus under­min­ing attempts to shed bad habits, says exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist Loran Nord­gren, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern University’s Kel­logg School of Management.

“Peo­ple have this self-control hubris, this belief they can han­dle more than they can,” says Nord­gren, who stud­ies the tug-of-war between willpower and temptation.

In one exper­i­ment, he mea­sured whether heavy smok­ers could watch a film that roman­ti­cizes the habit — called “Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes” — with­out tak­ing a puff. Upping the ante, they’d be paid accord­ing to their level of temp­ta­tion: Could they hold an unlit cig­a­rette while watch­ing? Keep the pack on the table? Or did they need to leave the pack in another room?

Smok­ers who’d pre­dicted they could resist a lot of temp­ta­tion tended to hold the unlit cig­a­rette — and were more likely to light up than those who knew bet­ter than to hang onto the pack, says Nord­gren. He now is begin­ning to study how recov­er­ing drug addicts deal with real-world temptations.

But temp­ta­tion can be more insid­i­ous than how close at hand the cig­a­rettes are.

Always snack in front of your favorite TV show? A dopamine-rich part of the brain named the stria­tum mem­o­rizes rit­u­als and rou­tines that are linked to get­ting a par­tic­u­lar reward, explains NIDA’s Volkow. Even­tu­ally, those envi­ron­men­tal cues trig­ger the stria­tum to make some behav­iors almost automatic.

Even sci­en­tists who rec­og­nize it can fall prey.

“I don’t like pop­corn. But every time I go to the cin­ema, I have to eat it,” Volkow says. “It’s fascinating.”

Much of what sci­en­tists know about dopamine’s role in habit for­ma­tion comes from the study of alco­hol and drug addic­tion, but it’s a key player in more com­mon habits, too, espe­cially overeating.

In fact, for any­thing that links an action and a reward, “dopamine is indis­pens­able for the for­ma­tion of these habits,” Volkow says.

A move­ment to pay peo­ple for behav­ior changes may exploit that con­nec­tion, as some com­pa­nies offer employ­ees out­right pay­ments or insur­ance rebates for adopt­ing bet­ter habits.

It’s not clear yet just how well a finan­cial incen­tive sub­sti­tutes as a reward. In one exper­i­ment, pay­ing smok­ers at Gen­eral Elec­tric up to $750 to kick the habit nearly tripled the num­ber who did, says Dr. Kevin Volpp, who directs the Cen­ter for Health Incen­tives at the Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania.

A sim­i­lar study that dan­gled dol­lars for weight loss found no dif­fer­ence — and envi­ron­men­tal temp­ta­tion might help explain the dif­fer­ing results.

It’s get­ting hard to smoke in pub­lic but “every time you walk down the street, there’s lots of sources of high-calorie, tasty, low-cost food,” Volpp says.

How­ever pay­ing for behav­ior plays out, researchers say there are some steps that may help counter your brain’s hold on bad habits:

• Repeat, repeat, repeat the new behav­ior — the same rou­tine at the same time of day. Resolved to exer­cise? Doing it at the same time of the morn­ing, rather than fit­ting it in hap­haz­ardly, makes the stria­tum rec­og­nize the habit so even­tu­ally, “if you don’t do it, you feel awful,” says Volkow the neu­ro­sci­en­tist, who’s also a pas­sion­ate runner.
• Exer­cise itself raises dopamine lev­els, so even­tu­ally your brain will get a feel-good hit even if your mus­cles protest.
• Reward your­self with some­thing you really desire, Volkow stresses. You exer­cised all week? Stuck to your diet? Buy a book, a great pair of jeans, or try a fancy restau­rant — safer per­haps than a box of cook­ies because the price inhibits the quantity.
• Stress can reac­ti­vate the bad-habit cir­cuitry. “You see peo­ple imme­di­ately eat­ing in the air­port when their flight is can­celed,” Volkow points out.
• And cut out the rit­u­als linked to your bad habits. No eat­ing in front of the TV, ever.

“What you want to be think­ing about is, ‘What is it in my envi­ron­ment that is trig­ger­ing this behav­ior?’” says Nord­gren. “You have to guard your­self against it.”

ARTICLE CREDIT: Yahoo! News

What are your New Year’s res­o­lu­tions? Share your goals by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post.