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As we continue to get wider every year, scientists are comparing the way America eats to the way that Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada and Mexico (among other countries) serves their meals.
Below is just a small summary of their findings.

Based on current recommended health guidelines, a plate of food served in a restaurant is statistically between 4 and 6 times larger than necessary. Eating half that much at home is still 2 to 4 times more than a recommended, healthy portion. The simple fact of it is: our portions are too big. When Foreigners visit America they are taken back by the large portions and understand why we are getting fatter and fatter.

Researchers call the “clean your plate” phenomenon the “completion compulsion”, which views foods in units that need to be consumed in their entirety in order for us to experience fullness. It’s what leads us to eat a whole candy bar instead of a bite, or an entire bag of potato chips (the small “snack” size you’d get in a vending machine) instead of a small handful of chips.

The completion compulsion was validated in a test that showed people given a smaller plate of food reporting feeling just as full as people given a larger plate of food, showing that people gauged their sense of fullness not on the amount of food they ate but on the emptiness of their plates.

But if we’re so conditioned to view food as units, we already have a healthy unit of food in place, and it’s called a ‘serving’. A single serving of any food is ordinarily somewhere from 90 to 160 calories. This means a food dense in calories will have a small portion size relative to foods light in calories.

The nutritional labeling on packaged foods includes the recommended number of servings. In many cases, however, we eat the entire package without noticing realizing we’ve just eaten 2, 3, 4, or more servings at once. That means if there are 250 calories in a serving and 3 servings in the package, eating all of it at once would give you 750 calories.

The intention of denoting a serving on the label is to help you devise the right portions for your meals. One serving ought to be one portion, but how often do we do it that way?

Tips for reducing your portion sizes overall include serving your food on smaller plates and serving food in the kitchen rather than at the table where the leftovers are sitting in front of you so temptingly.

Healthy dieting to lose weight need not involve depriving yourself of any of the foods you enjoy – not one – if you resolve yourself to reducing the amount of everything that you eat into healthier portions. This way, you can eat any food you like, if you eat a responsible portion of it.

This also means you don’t have to reduce your portions of all that you eat uniformly; you don’t have to starve yourself. To compensate for the hunger you may feel after reducing portion sizes of your favorite decadent, calorie-rich foods, you can eat a sizable portion of a food light in calories and feel just as full. And by having allowed yourself at least some of the calorie-dense yummy, your taste buds will be just as happy as your waistline.

Interval training is the best way to not only tone and sculpt muscles but it blasts fat away faster than standard cardio (brisk walking, running, swimming).

However many people don’t have time for the gym or can’t afford to purchase several machines for home use. A good alternative is the use of resistance bands (fitness bands, elastic bands, workout bands, fitness tubes).

With resistance bands you can start at a low tension and as your body gets stronger you can move up to higher tension bands. When people think of resistance bands they think of the bands that were produced years ago where the tubbing was flimsy and there was little resistance. However, today’s bands are so much more advanced that you can easily perform interval training workouts that rival the workout that you would get with an expensive fitness machine.

Not only can you get an excellent workout with today’s resistance bands but they can easily be packed away for storage or travel.

Bowflex, Total Gym and even Bally’s have a $50 Alternative - Bodylastics!

Bra bulge - don’t you just hate it? Sometimes you feel as though you have as many bulges in the back of your sweater than you do in the front.

Bra bulge is a problem among many women but unfortunately it is one of the hardest places to target. However there are some exercises you can do to which will tone your back and the muscles surrounding it, which will tighten the skin around this area.

If you have access to a pool one of the easiest and most effective ways to target this area and lose the bra bulge is by swimming breast stroke. This exercise targets the abdomen, pectorals, and back muscles. You should do between 20 and 30 laps of breast stroke at least 3 times a week. Use a broad range of motion to target the most muscle groups. If you don’t have access to a pool you can mimic this movement by getting in a squat position and doing the same arm movements. Since water adds resistance try adding 1 or 5 pound weights to achieve maximum results.

You can also do opposite leg and arm lifts to tone your back. What you do is lie on your stomach with your arms straight over your head. Your toes should be pointed to the ground. Begin by lifting your right arm and your left leg slightly off the ground. Lower and repeat with the opposite leg and arm combination. You should feel some muscular tension around your lower back area. If this tension is more than a slight discomfort discontinue this exercise and stick to the breast stroke as mentioned above.

Of course there is no way to target weight loss in a specific area of your body. These exercises will tone and tighten your back, but they won’t help you lose weight unless you pair it with a healthy diet and cardio exercise.

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Just because you’re on a diet certainly doesn’t mean that you won’t get cravings and want to snack. In fact, being on a diet probably means you’ll have urges more than you normally do.

So what do you do when this happens? Well, you might be happy to know that it’s okay to eat. But you can’t eat foods that will ruin your diet. So, the next time an urge hits you, make sure you’re prepared with foods for your diet.

One of the perfect foods for your diet is vegetables. You can choose any type of vegetable that you prefer. Just make sure you prepare them ahead of time. You can either have them fresh and cut-up or you can choose to sauté the veggies. You can sauté the vegetables in a small amount of olive oil or use a non-stick cooking spray. You can also sauté them with red peppers or garlic. Then you can use the veggies as a side dish or you can heat them up and eat them by themselves.

Another perfect food for your diet is cut-up vegetables. Wash the veggies, cut them up, put them in a plastic bag, and leave them in the refrigerator. Then when an urge to eat hits you, you have vegetables all prepared and ready for you to munch on.

Along the same lines as vegetables is fruit. Fruit offers a variety of great foods for your diet. Just remember to prepare them ahead of time as well. This is important so that you’ll be able to eat something right when the urge hits you. Otherwise, you may end up grabbing a bag of chips that certainly won’t be a good food for your diet.

Nuts are a food for your diet that doesn’t need any preparation. These are foods that you should keep in the house in case you have nothing else prepared. Nuts that work well are walnuts, peanuts, and almonds. In fact, it will almost feel like your cheating on your diet when you eat nuts, but you aren’t. Nuts are a healthy choice!
Did you know that eating nuts before having a sweet snack will actually slow down the absorption of sugar?

The key to sticking with your diet is to make sure you have foods around that are a healthy alternative when you feel the urge to munch on a snack. You need to make sure these foods for your diet are already prepared so that you don’t turn away from your diet plan to a food that isn’t healthy.

Another good option is to have a few bags of the 100 calorie snacks handy. Although they are not as healthy as fruits and veggies, sometime you just need to eat junk food so satisfy that sweet tooth. If you “cheat” on you diet every once in a while there will be less chance of you dropping your entire diet.

Be well-prepared with foods for your diet and you should be fine when the urge to snack hits you.

I was just having lunch with a friend whom I had not seen for a little while. When I had mentioned that she looked much slimmer she said that she has started Leanness Lifestyle which I was unfamiliar with (and I thought that I knew all the ways to lose weight). She had started with a 7 day free trial and decided that she liked it so much so continued on.

Between meal plans and exercises where you don’t need any special equipment, 24 hour support, and yada yada yada, she said that she had the motivation to keep on going.

To me it seemed to male a lot of sense and if Jenny can lose weight after I can’t even remember how many attempts I thought that I would let you guys know about it.

Here is their site Leanness Lifestyle
and just to let you know it’s based on science and nutrition so don’t expect any faddish information.

Here’s to your health!