Like It Or Not, You ARE a Role Model

This one may hit a little close to home for many of you, but that's the point. I would hope that every parent wants to be a great role model for their kids.

We want to teach them manners, bring them to church with us, be careful what we say in front of them, and of course not smoke or drink in front of them.

One thing I've learned from being a parent is that my 4-year old boy copies just about everything I do, whether I like it or not. Anything I do in front of him, it seems like he is immediately trying to repeat it until he gets it just right. For example, the other day I wadded up a piece of paper I found on the ground and threw it in the trash can about 10 feet away. As simple of an accomplishment as that was, he was mesmerized by it and attempted the same shot for what seemed like a dozen times until he made it in the trash can himself. It doesn't stop there though; he wants to walk like me, talk like me, and basically be me in every way. He has even gotten to the point of sitting in our recliner, crossing his ankles, and putting his hands behind his head... just like daddy.

Anyone reading this who is a parent knows exactly what I mean. So whether you realize it or not, you ARE a role model for your kids. They will copy their parents' behaviors, good or bad.

So why is it that we think our kids won't also copy how poorly we treat our bodies? If eating fast food and other types of junk on a daily basis has become a habit, your kids are much more likely to follow that same lifestyle. And why is it that we talk about and want our kids playing outside more and staying as active as possible, yet we may not have exercised ourselves in years?

I guess often times we want them to do as we say and not as we do; but nothing works better than leading by example. A recent study came out showing that 50% of kids with overweight parents will become overweight themselves, compared to 13% of non-overweight parents. So it's no surprise that the childhood obesity rate will continue to rise as long as America's adult obesity rate is rising (which it is, at an alarming rate). To me, this isn't an issue of whether or not it's acceptable to be overweight as a child, or about body image, or about any other excuses people like to come up with these days... it's about the health of you and your kids. Childhood obesity has been linked to numerous health problems such as joint pain, pre-diabetes, and even cardiovascular disease. In fact, obesity is one of the leading causes of cancer today, and that number is continuing to rise.

Being overweight as a child means having a much greater chance of being overweight as an adult. Bottom line is, at the end of the day, how your kids end up treating their bodies is greatly affected by how you treat your own body.

Their health begins with following their parents' lead, and using them as role models. So for the sake of your children, make sure you're a good one.

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Ideal Weight for Healthy Living

Usually our idea of ideal weight is dictated by the images of the beautiful shapely bodies of models and celebrities. The size zero bodies of beautiful women may look attractive on magazine pages or on television screen. However, when you realize the harm that these women do to their health while creating the skinny body, you will be forced to reconsider your concept of ideal weight.

What is an ideal weight? An ideal weight is one that keeps you healthy and fit. Health professionals do not emphasize on the term ideal weight, instead they focus on healthy weight. While diet and physical activities primarily contribute to the body of a person, there are other factors such as age, race, genetics, family history of body weight, environmental factors, behavior and metabolism rate that help to determine the body of a person. Body weight vs. Body Mass Index The ideal weight varies according to the stature of a person. Therefore, while measuring the body weight, it is necessary to take into account the height of a person.

While the weighing scale displays your body weight, to determine the amount of fat in your body, you must calculate your body mass index (BMI), which is defined as the weight, measured in kilogram or pound, divided by the square of height, measured in meters or feet. The body weight is considered healthy, when the BMI is between 19 and 24.9. People whose BMI is below 19 and above 24.9 are considered underweight and overweight respectively.

How to attain ideal weight To attain the ideal or healthy body weight you need a healthy diet and regular physical activities. Balancing energy consumption and energy expenditure is prerequisite for attaining the healthy body weight as well as for maintaining it. You gain weight when your energy expenditure is less than your energy consumption.

By increasing the level of physical activities you burn the unused calories that are stored as fat. A person is underweight when the amount of calorie intake is less than the amount of calorie used during physical activities. To attain the ideal body weight, an underweight person should slowly increase calorie consumption.

A healthy lifestyle will help you to maintain a healthy body mass index. A diet containing sufficient whole grain, fruits, vegetables and moderate amounts of animal protein is considered beneficial for health. A balanced diet combined with regular physical activities will keep you healthy and happy.

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Weekly Diet Plan

Most people think that diets are a way to lose weight quickly so they deprive their bodies of things that it needs and end up miserable and hungry. Most diets are considered fad diets, such as low carb diets, atkins diet, slim fast diets, no fat or low fat diets and on and on and on.

The problem with these are they never last and they don't provide you with results that you want and you end up frustrated having to start all over with something new.

You can't deprive your body of certain things and think you're going to feel fantastic while you're doing it.

This article is here to provide you with information about working a good diet into your life one week at a time. Metabolism describes the body's ability to burn fat. So the higher the metabolism, the more calories you burn.

So let`s improve it! This is easier than you might think. Drinking more water helps a lot, but the major keys to raising your metabolism are as follows. While, this approach to weight loss is most natural and healthy, it is not easy.

This is the reason that companies invent and produce diet pills and supplements in order to make it easier for people to lose weight and up their metabolism. One of the most popular categories of these pills, are fat blockers and fat binders. They work by reducing the amount of fat that your organism assimilates from foods. Fat blockers (the most well-known example is Orlistat, marketed as Xenical) in particular, inhibit the lipase enzyme in the intestines which breaks up fat making it ready for digestion. As a result, the fat cannot be absorbed by the organism so it passes freely through the bowel. Fat binders work by binding to the fat molecules, again making it unabsorbable by intestines. Fat blockers and binders have very nasty side effects (among them are uncontrollable foul-smelling anal discharges. Removing fats from your body in this way is not natural and therefore unhealthy.

Can you actually lose weight and still eat at the same time?? Yes. There is more to it than just eating. It depends on the foods you eat, which is completely obvious. The name of the diet is calorie shifting. The way it works is when you eat different forms of calories on a day to day basis it prevents your metabolism from going into auto-drive and instead stimulates it to be much more active. It gets right to the root of the problem, it changes the way your body responds to food, so effectively you end up with a more responsive metabolic response to everything you eat. This causes significant weight loss through eating normal sized meals and as a result allows your body to continue burning fat even once you stop the diet, because your metabolism becomes much more active overall.

You must intake plenty of water. He must drink water regularly and at least 12 liters/day Reduction in salt is necessary. It is impossible for most of the people to eliminate salt from their diet but it has to be avoided as much as possible.

You must eat small portion of meals in a day but it should be eaten frequently. So instead of eating two or three big meals, eat five small meals. You want to eat a little something every two to three hours so your body never has a chance to go into "store the fat" mode. When you go too many hours without eating, your body starts to think it is starving and goes into a so called survival mode. When it does this, it holds onto and stores all the bad fats in the body because it doesn't know when it's going to get fed again. You must eat high nutrition food that must include protein, vitamins and should avoid junk food, as it will result in bad health, and weight gain.

Look out for programs that teach you shortcuts and don't teach long term sustainable healthy eating. Who cares if you lose 10 pounds one month if you gain it all back the next month because you didn't learn anything. This is a lifestyle change that can be done in a weeks time. After a week, it will be natural to eat less, more often, and you will no longer have to think about it.

While it seems somewhat counterintuitive, eating more often is the secret to weight loss in some respects. Obviously this does not entail running out and eating everything you want. Instead, smaller portions of certain foods more often, spread throughout the day is the course to take. In this way, it's actually healthier to eat five smaller meals where you eat to contentment than to gorge yourself at 3 or less and many diets are based on this.

You will see results and feel better and healthier as a result of your diet.

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3 Tips on How to Use Honey Instead of Sugar

While honey and sugar have similar caloric content, honey has a lower glycemic index, more nutrients, and is considerably less processed. In addition, honey is sweeter than sugar, so the amount of honey required is less than you would use for sugar.

For those who want to minimize their intake of processed foods, honey is the better bet, and raw honey is the best option. However, substituting honey for sugar in baking recipes does present a few challenges. If you'd like to do some baking using honey in the place of sugar, you're probably wondering how to make the substitution, what amount to use, and what other alterations you need to make to your recipe to get the desired result.

The good news is there are only some minor changes to be made in order to pull off successful baking with honey. The resulting baked goods will look and taste just as good-if not better-than the same recipes made with ordinary sugar.

Below are three important tips you will need to follow if you plan on baking with honey:

1. Use Less Honey Since honey is much sweeter than ordinary sugar, less is needed to get the same effect. I recommend using 2/3 of the amount of honey as you would sugar; so if your recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar use 2/3 cup of honey in its place.

2. Reduce Liquids Honey contains water, and if the amount of liquid in the recipe is not adjusted the final result will suffer. I have found that using 80% (or 4/5) of the liquid works out well, and sometimes I add a little extra flour of baking soda as well. This will ensure that your confections will rise correctly. Honey comes with the added benefit of keeping your cakes fresh and moist longer as well.

3. Adjust Your Oven Temperature Breads and cakes made with honey will usually turn out better looking than those made with sugar. This is because the honey allows them to brown more easily and develop beautiful color. You will want to lower the oven temperature a bit to avoid over browning. If your recipe calls for 375 degrees, knock it down to 350. Choosing Honey For Baking For best results with baking choose a clear, mild honey like blossom.

The clearer your honey is the better, since clear honey is more neutral in flavor, and will not overpower the other flavors in your recipe.

Working with Honey There are a couple little things you can do to make the honey to sugar conversion easier. Start by greasing your spoons and measuring cups with a bit of butter to prevent sticking. Another option is to heat your utensils with hot water. This will also keep you from wasting honey!

With these simple tips you can create delicious baked goods without using processed sugar. Once you make a recipe with honey you will see just how easy it is, and you will never have to go back to using regular sugar again.

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#1 Rule of the Raw Food Diet

Fun and Your Health

What do you do for fun? Doctors don't often ask you this question in regards to health care, but maybe fun plays more of a role in health than we openly acknowledge.

Think about how you feel after spending a weekend doing something that interests you, whether that is playing frisbee outside, seeing a new movie, or whatever activity that you enjoy doing. Fun has great effects on both the body and mind. It gets your blood pumping, neurotransmitters flowing, and healthily engages your body and mind.

Sometimes when life gets stressful, there is a tendency to skip fun because of all there is to do or think about. During these stressful times, your body will start hinting to you that it's time for a dose of fun. You may start to experience sluggishness, your mind may feel foggy, and your mood may throw more anxiety and irritability your way. You might feel just generally out of balance. What your body's telling you is that it's time to shake things up a bit and distract yourself from the stress and worries.

What is fun? These days, fun may conjure up images of watching videos online, playing on a tablet or smart phone, and catching up with social media. While these are all common forms of distraction and fun, it can be helpful to step away from the screens temporarily to try out other types of fun. Fun can involve doing something new, surprising yourself by using a new talent, getting creative, or hanging out with friends.

While these activities may seem obvious, they're some of the first ones we can neglect when stress enters the picture. Fun helps you grow, learn new things about yourself, and stretch your imagination. Even though doctors don't ask how much fun you have, it's a good idea to ask yourself once in a while. Is there an activity that you enjoy that you haven't had a chance to do much lately? If so, rearrange your schedule a bit or write a reminder on a post-it note so that you hold yourself to getting back to it. See if a friend wants to join you if you think that would be fun. And for extra fun, ditch the screens for a day.

You'll most likely find that after having some fun, the daunting nature of stress, work, and other responsibilities softens around the edges. You'll feel renewed energy for dealing with the challenges that are on your plate and any others that might pop up. And you can say to yourself, "Hey--I had fun and feel better. I deserve it!" So, the healthy question for this week is: What do you want to do for fun?

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The Effect Being Over Weight Can Have on Your Life

It has now been proven that in many countries more than thirty percent of men are clinically obese and more than twenty five percent of women. 

This is a disturbing statistic and will only get worse unless people begin to take control of their lives. Now it is not only adults that are affected but children as well. When children become obese it is generally the fault of their parents and it could become much more serious. Bullying and abuse at school could have a dramatic affect on a child and being fat and unable to take part in sports and physical activities makes a child more vulnerable to all types of ridicule. This could psychologically damage a child and could have a detrimental outcome for many years to follow.

Caring for your body is not difficult but many people seem to think that it is as they indulge in their comfort zone with little exercise activity and consuming a diet of convenience foods. If your children witness this way of living they will think that this is the way to conduct their lives too. 

To prevent this action, adults must set an example and show the next generation how to live to remain healthy. For the younger generation a lot of knowledge is acquired at school but it is in the home where children should learn how to live a healthy, happy life.So for the sake of your children, it is essential to invest in a diet program and make a difference to yourself and your family. 

Doing the same thing every day and expecting things to change is not the answer. You are the only person that can make the change, by staying as you are you are gambling with your life and the lives of your family. It is not difficult signing up to a diet plan but it will become extremely so for those closest to you if you do not.Dignity and self respect are two things that diminish as you become thirty or forty pounds over weight. 

Failure to take advantage of a diet plan could see your body become ravaged by heart problems and diabetes. Life expectancy will become greatly reduced and your mobility, over time, will be non existent. So ensure that you do not have to rely on others for your mere existence; take control and make an investment for the benefit of your body in a diet program.
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