4 proven tricks you can use to eat less food and calories

I found these 4 tricks (that are proven to help people eat less food and overall calories) while reading a fascinating book recently called 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman. I think you'll find these very helpful if you're looking to control your caloric intake and reduce your body fat.

These tricks were tested in scientific studies and are quick and easy to implement. I thought these were VERY interesting...

Trick #1 to Eat Less -- Several studies prove that the size of the bowl, plate, or spoon that you use can directly influence how much food and calories you consume.

Richard Wiseman, in the book 59 Seconds, talks about one study conducted where party guests were randomly given either 17 or 34-ounce bowls and 2 or 3 ounce spoons, and allowed to help themselves to ice cream. It was found that the party guests given the large spoons and large bowls had eaten 14% and 31% more ice cream respectively, than the people using the smaller spoons or smaller bowls. Interesting huh!

Another study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania used a bowl of M&Ms that were left in the hallway of an apartment building. A sign next to the bowl told people to help themselves to the M&Ms. Some days a tablespoon sized scoop was used in the M&Ms and on other days, a larger scoop was used in the bowl. The researchers found that the larger scoop caused people to take TWICE the amount of M&Ms on average compared to the people that had used the smaller scoop.

I've also seen studies referenced in the past that showed that people who used larger plates consumed more calories than those using smaller plates.

The lesson -- Use smaller plates, bowls, and silverware and you may inadvertently reduce your calorie intake. This also means saying NO to seconds and thirds!

Trick #2 to Eat Less -- You've probably heard before that eating slower can help you to eat less because it gives time for the fullness signal to reach your brain and thereby shut off your appetite before you've eaten too much.

However, this study below found a twist on this!

According to Mr. Wiseman in the book 59 Seconds, a study at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center had overweight participants eat a meal at 3 different speeds:

a) their normal rate
b) half their normal rate
c) their normal rate at first, followed by half their normal rate (normal-slow combo)

The results were interesting... Eating at the slower rate caused the men to eat less, but not the women (that's weird!). However, the 3rd group that combined the normal pace at first with the slower rate after that caused both the men and women to have a large reduction in their appetite and eat less. The normal-slow combo was found to be more effective than just the slow-only group. Why? I have no idea, but those are interesting results!

Mr Wiseman stated that the lesson here to eat less is "to start at your normal speed but then savor each and every mouthful".


Trick #3 to Eat Less -- According to the book 59 Seconds, a series of experiments conducted in offices compared putting chocolates right on people's desks vs placing the chocolates six feet away. In another experiment, the chocolates were put inside either transparent or opaque jars. When the chocolates were placed on the person's desk instead of 6 feet away, people ate on average 6 more chocolates per day per person. Also, the chocolates in the transparent jars were eaten 46% more quickly than the opaque jars.

Just shows... out of sight, out of mind! As you may already know, I recommend never even having junk food around your house at all...that way, you're never tempted by it and you're forced to only eat healthy foods... but then you can use your weekly cheat meals to eat junk food out at a restaurant. That way the junk food is never in your house to begin with!


Trick #4 to Eat Less -- Studies have found that people eat significantly more when they are distracted by TV, movies, games, or other distractions. In one experiment mentioned in the book 59 Seconds, people who were more absorbed by a movie ate significantly larger amounts of popcorn compared to those that were paying less attention to the movie.

In another experiment, people who actively listened to a detective story during lunch (being distracted by the story), ate 15% more food than those who sat in silence during their lunch.

The lesson -- ditch the TV and other distractions and focus on your food! Enjoy every bite of your food and you will naturally consume less calories while enjoying your food more.

Interesting right?!! These 4 tricks were being experimented and tested.
Stay by having 1 trick a day or until you manage to reduce weight.
Results will be doubled if you know some ways to make the weight loss more enjoyable.

Sweeteners making you fat!?

How many of you out there have heard about how sweeteners making you fat? Well i guess you only know it wont because of its reduced sugar content. Right?
I want to talk about how artificial sweeteners will make a person fat because i've noticed there are alot confusions and misunderstanding on the application of the non-caloric sweeteners.


Artificial sweeteners and the huge list of products sweetened with them are marketed to you relentlessly as "healthy foods" or "healthier" than sugar or corn syrup sweetened products. But are they really?

Just to clarify, some of the most popular artificial sweeteners on the market today are:

Splenda (sucralose)
Aspartame
Saccharine
Acesulfame Potassium (aka - acesulfame K)

There substances can be found in almost every "diet" drink, ice creams, most low-carb products and almost all reduced sugar products. To make the whole story more interesting, even most protein powder are loaded with these artificial sweeteners too. (just take a look on the products you will be able to find those contents)

The truth is that artificial sweeteners are not even close to being healthy, and as you'll discover in a minute, can easily be just as bad for you, if not worse, than sugar or corn syrup. Most people think that they are doing something good for themselves by choosing the "diet" drinks or "lite" yogurts compared to the sugar-laden versions, but the problem is that you're exposing yourself to a whole new set of problems with the artificially sweetened drinks and foods.

I'm sure you already know the problems with sugar or high fructose corn syrup sweetened products. The excess empty calories, blood sugar spike, and resulting insulin surge this creates in your body not only promotes fat gain, but also stimulates your appetite further, making things even worse.

On the other hand, artificial sweeteners save you calories, but there's growing evidence that they can increase your appetite for sweets and other carbohydrates causing you to eat more later in the day anyway. Therefore, you don't really save any calories at all. Also, studies have shown that artificial sweeteners can stimulate high insulin levels in your body too, which again can promote fat storage.

All of the 4 artificial sweeteners listed above are nasty chemicals that the human body is simply not meant to ingest. However, most of us are ingesting a whole lot of these chemicals on a daily basis. Aside from the problems I touched on so far, other health issues that have been related to artificial sweeteners in scientific studies as well as observations are:

-some have been linked to potential cancer risks
-negative effects on the liver, kidneys, and other organs
-stimulating cravings
-gastrointestinal problems
-developmental problems in children and fetuses
-headaches
-and too many more issues to list


Now some of the above potential health problems are definitely not proven as fact in studies. However, some of them have been shown in animal studies given high doses. Regardless of the fact that any real health problems for actual human use are not proven yet, I don't know about you, but I'd rather protect myself and steer clear of these possibly dangerous artificial chemicals.

Of course, despite all of the health issues potentially associated with artificial sweeteners, the companies that sell the products will continue to claim that they are fully safe and they have studies that prove that they are safe. The bottom line is that the body was not designed to deal with foreign substances like artificial sweeteners.

Get more advices to know more and clearly on how to control the daily sweeteners intake. By knowing better this can better adjust yourself to lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

There are ways to help you to reduce the sugar level inside your body by assessing yourself in a more systematic and thorough way. Know yourself better.

7 top exercise Rules to keep you Going!!

Planing an list of exercises to do in a week/daily has always been hard to maintain, this happens to everyone!! Well, starting on an exercise is just as easy by adopting the 7 rules below!!

1-Don't let the exercise routines be an ad-hoc
Starting planing the exercise timetable in weekly basis before you start the exercises. Is only through planing, then your goals (getting fit, weight loss and etc) can be achieved. But if you decide to do it ad-hoc eg "whenever i have time after work then i do exercises" if your exercise plan follows this kind of pattern, the plan will boon to fail. So start breaking the ice by sketching out the exercises plan. It wont be hard!!

2-Start today to cultivate the habit of exercising regularly
Is always good to have a head start by having a much-complete exercises plan to follow, but the most important is to maintain its consistency. Get the hang of doing exercises regularly, such as do a fast/brisk walking 2 hours after the dinner on the planned time slot of the day.

3-Plan the exercises based on the resources available to you
Like i stay near a Sports Recreation Centre, it therefore makes more sense to include the weight and swimming int eh exercises plan. Always find ways in the environment near you to include any extra exercise such as jogging and cycling.

4-Make sure you can do the exercise by yourself
It is always important to develop physical activities which you can do it by yourself such as swimming, cycling and jogging. Relying solely on group activities such as badminton or soccer means that you have to compromise to other people timings. In the end, you might not get to exercise.

5-NEver ever exercise with an empty stomach
I used to experience weak energy release for lifting weight with empty stomach, not only you will feel hungry but hurt yourself with the weights. So from now i always eat a slice of wholemeal bread (my favourite) about 15 minutes before exercising. When you are hungry, you sugar level will become too low during the exercise and this can lead to the feeling of a "sluggish" workout. Have a very light and healthy snack just prior to exercising. This helps alot.

6-Begin with cardio workouts
Always begin with some cardio workouts as a warm up to your "quiet" body. So I encourage you to begin with cardio-based workouts to lose weight. Brisk walking, cycling, jogging are good cardio workouts. The key is to build up your level fitness gradually to a point where you can comfortably exert yourself for sustained periods of time at an optimal heart rate. This is the stage where fat-burning is optimised.
As your exercise intensity increases over time, your body's metabolism rate also increases so you will burn more calories during resting period.

7-Add on weight training
Once your level of cardio fitness has reached a suitable level, you may consider starting on some form of weight training. Remember: muscles are the main calorie-burners in your body. So maintaining some form of muscle mass is key to maintaining your weight in the longer term.

Hope the above tips can be helpful.

To your success!!

Are You Buying TOXIC Fish and Seafood at Grocery Stores and Restaurants?

You've probably already heard about high mercury levels in some types of fish, and even PCB's in some fish too. However, this video goes beyond just mercury and PCBs and shows how your fish that you buy can be tainted with some pretty scary stuff!

And how about the fish they found being raised in sewage! Interesting. And the fungicide they found in some fish that can cause birth defects and cancer...



Now before you let this video freak you out and swear off fish or seafood for good, here are some things to keep in mind in order to make sure you're getting healthier fish and seafood:

1. Most of these problems are always related to farmed fish. Stick to wild fish for the healthiest possible choices.

Besides farmed fish sometimes being tainted with harmful chemicals, farmed fish is many times fed an un-natural diet (fish are not meant to eat soy and corn pellets), and this reduces the nutritional value of the fish, and distorts the omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio, making farmed fish less healthy for you.

2. Even if you stick to wild fish instead of farmed (which will help avoid many of the chemicals mentioned in the video), you can still overdose on mercury if you eat certain types of fish too often... fish that are high on the food chain accumulate the most mercury... so that would be large predatory fish such as tuna, swordfish, shark, grouper, king mackeral, tilefish, striped bass, etc.

By the way, when it comes to canned tuna... white tuna (albacore) has higher levels of mercury than light tuna.

This doesn't mean that you should never eat these fish (after all, I'm a sushi lover myself!)... your body can handle some levels of mercury in fish eaten on occasion (2-3 times per month), and if you're healthy and eat a very clean diet with lots of detoxifying veggies, herbs, spices, and teas, your body can slowly eliminate the low levels of mercury. However, keeping these large predatory fish to 2-3 times per month max is a good idea. Note: pregnant women should consult their doctor for the entire list of fish to avoid during pregnancy.

3. Wild fish that are lower on the food chain can still be very healthy, but will have MUCH lower levels of mercury. This can include wild salmon (one of my favorite meals), pollock, trout, sardines, herring, and many types of shellfish.

Also, keep in mind that fish such as salmon, trout, sardines, and herring are super-rich in healthy fats, including omega-3 fatty acids (great source of DHA and EPA components)

Wanting to know more how to keep yourself in tip-top condition to spend your daily life, do visit The Truth about Six Pack Abs by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist.

3 Fat Loss Nutrition Tips To Blast Fat!

The key factors in the quality diets are:

-Calorie intake (matters whether you're consciously counting or not)
-Consumption of sufficient quantity of essential nutrients
-Consideration of individual likes and dislikes
-Consideration of metabolic abnormalities
-Occasional breaks from the diet
-Recognizing that you don't have to stick to the program 100% of the time to see the benefits

Hence, there are 3 fat loss nutrition tips to lose fat fast!!

1-Does consuming junk food (highly processed foods) make you fat? That depends on how much junk food you eat and your average daily metabolic rate. Isn't junk food bad for your health? That depends on how much junk food you eat, your energy expenditure and whether you have any metabolic abnormalities.

2-Do Calorie sources matter if a calorie is a calorie?
A calorie is a unit of energy. It is the amount of energy or heat that it takes to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). The energy derived from foods when they are oxidized in the body is measured in kilocalories (thousands of calories).

A kilocalorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1000 grams of water one degree Celsius. Kilocalorie is written as "Calorie" (with a capital C) or it may be abbreviated to "Kcalorie" or "Kcal." Therefore, whenever the word calorie is used in connection with food or nutrition, the meaning is always kilocalorie or calorie.

In terms of fat loss, a low calorie diet consisting of Twinkies will result in weight loss just like a low calorie diet consisting of fruits and vegetables. When considering which is more nutritious fruits and vegetables wins hands down. Which is more filling? Fruits and vegetables win again. When considering issues other than energy content it's not just about calories.

3-Supplements
Do you really need to spend hundreds of dollars per month on supplements if your nutritional practices are optimal? I doubt it. Let me re-word that, no, you don't.

Supplements add to the program. They do not replace sound training and nutrition. Legendary protein researcher, Kevin Tipton, says, "There is no reason to recommend protein supplements per se because there is no evidence that supplements work better than foods." I am not anti-supplement, but I am anti-nonsense.

So start today and list out the tips with all the sub titles to help you lose fat fast!!

How much should you exercise?

How much exercise you should do ? Daily? weekly?

In fact, 30 minutes of interval exercise can provide the same benefits as many hours of conventional workouts. Again, it depends on how much/what kinda exercises that you perform, your age, sex and health conditions.

Isnt this easy when you can make it up for just one hour a day to stay healthy?

Well, i personally think the most important message is to be ACTIVE. How much ones should be exercising depends on the personal fitness goals.

According to the health experts, they recommend that adults get at least 3 hours minimum weekly with moderate to intensive physical activity such as jogging, dancing, badminton,weight lifting and aerobic dancing and etc.

The key to exercise is that "Some is better than none. More is better than some. Too much is difficult to get"

"When I see studies that say one hour of exercise a day, people freak out and say, 'I don't have that kind of time,' " Pete McCall, an exercise physiologist at the American Council on Exercise.

The amount of time a person should exercise depends on his or her fitness goals, whether it's for weight loss, health maintenance or performance training. And that person also needs to fit diet and nutrition into the equation.

"If you take in lots of calories, it doesn't matter how much you exercise if you dont watch what you take in"

Well, there are 2 steps to lose fat fast

1 - exercise properly with your workout plans
2 - watch what you take in daily, adjust if there is a need to change

Not only cardio. If you really want to lose weight you have to incorporate strength training as well. Strength training boost your metabolism (burning fat even when you are sitting or sleeping) Both cardio and strength traning should be included in any workout if you are looking to lose weight.

The amount of time that a person exercise is irrelevant if they are not increasing their heart rate. You must make sure that when you are exercising you are in your Target Heart Rate zone. Once you begin exercising in this zone your benefits are just as great as if you were doing extremely high intensity exercise.

For more details about specific exercises and foods that burn belly fat fast, as well as more strategies for getting a flat stomach naturally, you can get a copy of "The Truth about Six Pack Abs" by Mike Geary. He is one of the most recognized bodybuilding authors and his book has helped thousands of men and women get rid of their belly fat quickly, effectively and for good.

Would knowing metabolism rate help with weight loss?

Metabolic rate tests measures the amount of oxygen that your body consumes as a measure of your resting metabolic rate. There are office-based systems available that can do the same thing in a shorter time with far less expensive equipment.

They are not quite as accurate as the hospital-based tests but again, they can be useful in some people, particularly if the causes of a slower metabolism can be addressed, such as medication, low thyroid function or low levels of muscle mass.

Resting metabolic rate that is measured accounts for approximately 60-70 percent of your total metabolic rate (total daily calories burned). Most of your resting metabolic rate is beyond your control and is dictated by age, height, sex, weight, genetics, organ function and hormones.

The only aspect of your resting metabolic rate that you really have control over, unless you have a hormonal or medication problem, is your muscle mass

The remainder of your total metabolic rate is composed of exercise, which accounts for about 20-25 percent depending on how active you are, and eating (also called the thermic effect of feeding), which accounts for about 10 percent of your total daily calories burned.

When you test your resting metabolic rate, you must then multiply that number by an activity factor that usually ranges from 1.3 to 1.9, depending on how physically active you are every day in your job and also during exercise. Resting metabolic rate can also be estimated using a mathematical equation and can be calculated by some of the more sophisticated body fat scales that measure age, height, sex, weight, fat mass and lean body mass to come up with a fairly accurate estimate.

If you think you would find it helpful to know more precisely how many calories you should be consuming daily, you might want to consider testing your resting metabolic rate or getting a body composition analysis. Once you know this number, it is critical to pay close attention to the number of calories you consume to lose weight, since most people who are overweight underestimate caloric intake by up to 30percent.

In addition, I would highly recommend adding strength training to your exercise regimen to give yourself a metabolic boost. Also, if possible, you should increase the intensity or duration of your cardiovascular activity.

Body Working Out!!

This series of articles is written for the beginning six packs builders, someone who either has been training a very short time with some initial knowledge of weight training, but who is unsure of what they're doing, or someone just starting out.

This is just the place for you.!!