Recently my girlfriend purchased “The Abs Diet for Women” and “The Abs Diet Eat Right Every Time Guide”. “The Abs Diet Eat Right Every Time Guide” is a guide that contains recipes, shopping lists, and a lot of other useful tools. One of my favorite sections is called “The Lesser of Two Evils” in which they compare two different foods and show you which one is “Less Bad” for you. It’s in a chart form so it’s quick, and the charts are broken down by different fast food restaurants, so you can pick what to eat from Arby’s, Taco Bell, etc. The charts only compare two different foods at a time, but it can be a fun game to ask “Which is better for you: Burger King Onion Rings or Burger King French Fries?”

Full of meal recipes, smoothies, stories, and all the basic information you’ll need to get started on the Abs Diet, “The Abs Diet Eat Right Every Time Guide” is a great place to start if you think you might be overwhelmed by the size of the original Abs Diet book – though it actually contains about the same amount of diet information. “The Abs Diet Eat Right Every Time Guide” breaks down the basics of the Abs Diet and presents it in a fun and interesting way.

If you have used the Abs Diet or have something to add to the conversation, leave a comment and I will be sure to respond.

The website is pretty simple to understand. You get a list of seafood types in the left column. You choose a type of seafood and then a page loads that shows you the different market names for that seafood, and tells you what the different market names reflect. Up to this point it hadn’t occurred to me that there would be different names for the same seafood, so I quickly navigated to salmon to get some more information about what I was eating.

I arrived at the salmon information page and found 3 categories of salmon: “Best”, “Good” and “Avoid”. Within each of the categories there are several market names. I went to the kitchen and retrieved the label from my salmon, only to find that it said “Farmed Salmon – Dye Added” in big bold letters. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I just assumed that since I was getting freshly packed salmon, it would be something that was good for me. I couldn’t have been more off base.

Apparently farmed salmon isn’t very healthy, as it falls into the “Avoid” category. When salmon is raised in captivity it will often lose or not develop the natural pink color, so they inject or soak the meat in red dye to color it, so that humans find it more appetizing. That is, they find it more appetizing until they realize what it is that they are eating.

Needless to say, I couldn’t finish my meal at this point. I disposed of the remaining salmon and continued to read through the Seafood Guide. There’s a lot of important and interesting information in there. The site centers around what kind of seafood is healthy, and what kind of seafood is environmentally friendly. I hope the Monterey Bay Aquarium site can help you before you buy unhealthy fish.

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As an example, I currently live on the 5th floor of my building. Between the lobby and the 5th floor, there are 80 stairs. Looking from a practical view, my elevator isn’t particularly fast, so I won’t lose much time if I take the stairs. If I go outside once per workday and take the stairs every time, I will be walking approximately 400 steps per week; 20,000 steps per year; Compare that to the person who does not take the stairs, and you are getting quite a bit more exercise without having to think about it.

I’m not a health expert and it seems that your calories burned depends on many factors including your current weight, but a good estimate seems to be that you burn .11 calories per stair that you climb without using the banister or other support. If you do it fast, I’m guessing you’ll burn more calories once you get your heart pumping. As an added bonus, you can burn .5 calories for each step that you go down, so you can try that too.

Taking my 400 steps per week estimate, that means I can burn an extra 44 calories per week – or about 2,200 calories per year. That’s like running for an extra 3.5 minutes per week, or an extra 180 minutes per year.

While none of these numbers may seem exceptional, taking the stairs can be a piece of your plan for healthy living. If you aren’t in good shape, it is a great way to start losing weight. If you are already in shape, taking the stairs is just another piece that you can add to your already healthy lifestyle.

Do you take the stairs? Tell us about it.

I’ve gone through this cycle many times, in different parts of my life. Sometimes my social life starts to drag and I need to make an effort to restart and spend time with my friends. Sometimes my relationship starts to drag and we need to restart the fire. No matter where your life is at this moment, I bet there is one area that could use a healthy restart.

Today was the day that I restarted my healthy lifestyle. After several weeks of moving to a new apartment, fussing over work, having family visits, and generally slacking off, I knew I had strayed too far from my daily workout schedule and my healthy eating habits.

I’ve found that the best way to restart a part of your life, is to pick a date in the near future as your restart date and to enroll someone in your action. Last week I enrolled my girlfriend by declaring to her “I am restarting my exercise and diet next Monday.” – she was excited and wanted to do it with me. Between then and now, I started to get back to my diet, but I knew in the back of my mind that Monday (today) was my restart day, so I didn’t have to be hard on myself for any exceptions that I made over the weekend.

The few days before my restart gave my mind time to prepare and gave me a chance to get any last “bad habits” out of my system – so I was able to enjoy two different Greek restaurants this weekend, rather than feeling guilty about it. This morning we woke up at 6am and did our workout. Then I made breakfast and smoothies, and I’ve been chugging along my healthy eating as normal today.

I think giving yourself a few days before your restart is a good way to take on a new or revised challenge. If you’re sitting at your desk and suddenly have the idea “I’ll start eating healthy today…” – how likely are you to carry that out through the rest of the month? How likely are you to carry that out through the rest of your life?
It’s important to enroll others in your action and give yourself time to prepare. If it’s a new undertaking such as a diet or exercise routine, you may need time to research the topic. Other areas of your life may need time to organize and align before you can really restart them. Whatever your goals, I feel that giving yourself time to mentally prepare will help your restart be more successful than ever.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to leave a comment and I will be sure to respond.

Drink More Water – I took this on several years ago and I started to shed pounds quickly. Soft drinks (Juice, Pop, Soda, Beer, etc) are loaded with empty calories that provide basically no value to your body. Water, on the other hand, doesn’t carry the empty calories. Water also helps to cleanse your body, and obviously keeps you very hydrated. Many people say that they feel more energized and their skin is clearer after they stop drinking soft drinks and start drinking more water.

Take The Stairs- I live on the second floor of my building and often see people waiting for the elevator, to go down up one floor. The basic idea here is that most Americans take less than 2,000 steps per day, which is not very good for your body. We spend our lives sitting down in front of computers, so any time you can do to get yourself to take a few extra steps, it is good. Park in a further parking space, walk to the store, take your dog for a walk, take the stairs. Every little bit will add up to help you lose weight.

Pack Your Lunch – If you eat fast food regularly (more than once a month), you can start to lose weight now by stopping that practice. Most fast food options are horrible for your diet and health. High in fat and sugar, low in anything good. Even the recent addition of salads at McDonald’s have proven to be not as healthy as they may seem, as they have a huge amount of sugar. A great step towards a healthy lifestyle is to pack your lunch every day, and it will save you a lot of money too.

Start at the Grocery Store – Of course, packing lunch won’t do you any good unless you’re buying good foods to begin with. If you are surfing the junk food aisle and buying frozen dinners, that’s what you’re going to be eating at home. You already have a basic idea of what is good and what is bad, the key is to implement those ideas into your shopping habits. If all you have at home is Twinkies, then you are going to eat Twinkies when you are hungry. If you start buying fruit, nuts, etc, then you will begin to eat those items and lose weight without thinking about it.

Have an idea for how you can start to lose weight now? Leave a comment and I will be sure to reply.