1) For a great list of calorie burned calculators; Martindale’s Calculators On-Line Center: Part I:I-N – Nutrition. It also includes energy calculators including one site that estimates the energy expended in over 600 different activities. The KCAL-CULATOR is in the runner’s web and allows you to estimate your energy needs.

2) For nutrition tips for being athletic in helping to gauge your energy needs: Nutrition on the Move – Nutrition Tips.

3) Calorie Counter helps you calculate your BMI (Body Mass Index) and has many tips about diets available and the foods to eat.

4) “If you’ve looking for information on cutting calories and fat in your diet, achieving a healthy weight, or favorite low-calories, reduced-fat foods and beverages (and the ingredients that make them possible)…you’ve come to the right place!” The Calorie Control Council – Information on cutting calories and fat and achieving a healthy weight.

5) From the Food Network online, explains how to manage your weight in three simple equations: Get Healthy : Low Calorie : What are Low Calorie Diets? : Food Network.

6) Quick Guide to Calorie Needs When Losing Weight has many resources explained such as good protein, good fat, how to reduce calories, general diet nutrition, healthy vegetarianism, etc.

7) Self magazine has fitness calculators divided into three sections: get your best body, eat right, and burning calories. Caloric Needs Calculator in Fitness on SELF.com.

For another BMI (Body Mass Index), Basal Metabolic Rate calculator use, lifestyle activity, and other weight loss help, use How Many Calories Do I Need? – basal metabolic rate calculator.

When you are feeling emotional, you need to drink as much water or other liquids as you can to delay the eating. If you aren’t hungry anymore which is what will happen, give yourself permission to eat the food later when you are hungry.

I quit smoking 15 years ago by never saying I couldn’t have a cigarette. Instead I learned to delay the decision to smoke or not until a later time. By delaying smoking, I generally forgot to smoke. After the time of not smoking grows, returning to smoking never seemed like a good idea when I was rational and not emotional.

Measurement will be today’s focus for how I lost weight. Measuring your food every time that you eat will be a huge key to your losing weight and keeping it off. When I don’t measure for a few days, I get on the scale to see if I’ve gained weight. If I have, I return to my modified fast.

My modified fast is drinking liquids for as long as I can before I begin eating solids for that day. Remember to always have an assortment of liquids available with no calories. The choices are: (1) water with Real Lemon added will be the liquid that helps you the most-make the water with more or less lemon depending on your taste, (2) always have flavored waters with no calories in your refrigerator, (3) no calorie sodas for when all else fails, and (4) I keep a 2 quart pitcher half frozen from the night before so that regular, cold water can be a choice.

Water is one of your best friends in weight management. Your second best friend is the cup measurements that you have available. Use these equivalents for measure: 1 pound=16 ounces, 1 ounce=28.35 grams, 3 teaspoons=1 tablespoon, 4 tablespoons=1/4 cup, 8 tablespoons=1/2 cup, 16 tablespoons=1 cup, 1 cup=1/2 pint, 4 cups=quart, 1 pound=500 grams, and ¼ pound=125 grams.

For food and/or calories, we use the following sites:

Calories expended during exercise:

http://www.calorie-counter.net/calories-burned-by-exercise.htm

Nutritional value:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/NutritionalChart.htm

Food charts:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Information/FoodLabels.htm

I began the slow process to find out what I liked among the lower-calorie dressing. Imagine my surprise that I could make my own dressing of 16 ounces for 180 calories for the whole thing. That averages out to about 12 calories per tablespoon.

Quite a difference! At the same time, I realized that the lettuce salads weren’t giving me much in nutrition. So I researched the salads online and came upon a Greek salad with no lettuce that I modified.

My Greek Salad (that I have every day): small sweet tomatoes, crumbled Feta cheese, sliced black olives, cucumbers, red peppers, and pepperoni. I make sure to have all the ingredients on hand so I don’t run out. I need to chew everyday in order to enjoy food. The dressing that I created is 32 oz. of balsamic vinegar, 2 tsp. of Dijon mustard, 3-4 oz. of lemon juice, and 3-5 tablespoons of Splenda. The whole recipe makes over a pint and is 200 calories for the whole recipe. So 2 tablespoons of my dressing is 12 calories. My dressing is so strong that I don’t need much. But if I used 8 tablespoons as I did in February I would still be using 50 calories instead of 500. Some of the current salad dressings I use are any dressings with 50-60 calories per tablespoon.

My favorite cook who has a television show is Sam, the cooking guy, and his show called Just Cook It! Is on the Discovery Health Channel. He teaches how to cook and eat healthy food quickly. I have downloaded most of his recipes into a three-ring notebook. Tip: When you are downloading material you want to keep, buy 3 ring copy paper.

After I decided to see how long it took for my body to tell me I was hungry, I started a modified fast. I call it modified because I ate some food. At the beginning I chose to add more water to my diet. Plain water is boring to me after the first day, so I added 1/3 cup or ¼ cup of Real Lemon to my 2 quart pitchers. I bought the pitchers at Target and they are narrow and fit in my freezer. I was filling them half full and freezing them for the next day. After awhile, I changed from the pitchers to freezing half bottles of the Real Lemon mix.

The last thing I do in the evening is to make sure that my pitcher is in the refrigerator to get cold for the next day. In the morning I add Real Lemon to the pitcher and begin drinking my lemon water. I save the flavored water for the evening as the evenings are the time I do my emotional eating. The Diet sparkling water has natural fruit flavors and is O calories. You can buy it at WalMart, Winn Dixie or Publix grocery stores. I vary the store and the flavor to keep from getting bored with the flavor.

On the second day through the next five days, I focused on keeping an exact count of the calories I was consuming. I found one of my downfalls was the calorie count in my dressing. When I began my food program in February, I was eating a lot of those lettuce blends and cutting up celery, onions, and carrots to add to the salad. I was using a balsamic vinaigrette loaded with olive oil. I had been using as much as I wanted because I thought the calories in the dressing couldn’t be that important. So by eating my healthy, good-for-me salad, I was using about 8 tablespoons after I started measuring it for a whopping 500 calories!

So I began a search for a salad that I would want to eat everyday.

Having quit drinking in 1976 and smoking in 1989, I have been thinking about losing weight for 10 years. Obviously, I haven’t been working at it too hard. The hardest part of giving up an addiction is making the decision to give it up. Years ago, I learned that you leave an addiction when the pain outweighs the pleasure. I don’t know what made me decide in February to lose weight.

I started working around the foods that I don’t want to live without. These include any kind of pasta, any kind of hard bread, and any Italian dish. My husband and I almost always eat at home. He hasn’t weighted more that 157 pounds in the thirteen years we’ve been together. At 6’2”, he has the exact frame that I would like. I, on the other hand, was 40 pounds overweight.

Many of the books that helped me to formulate my weight loss plan are in the Changemaker Library. One of the first to help me to get my thinking about food off quantity and on to portions was The 7 Secrets of Slim People. The main idea I kept from that book was to not eat unless I was physically hungry. I couldn’t remember the last time my body and not my mind told me I “wanted something”. My mind is so devious that I told myself I would faint if I went without food for any period of time. I decided to change what and when I ate so I started a food journal. Armed with Barbara Kraus’s Carbohydrates and Calories, I wrote down everything I ate for five days.

By learning simple physical exercises, you can combine these with mental and emotional techniques to begin calming yourself during your tense times. Stress is directly proportional to your letting go of all the experiences over which you have no control.

If you know the God of your understanding, letting go is much easier than holding on to resentments or control issues. But, even if you haven’t made the commitment about God, you can practice the following exercises.

My physical tension center is my neck and upper shoulders.

If I ignore my discomfort, the tension only gets worse. I practice these:

• Sit on a chair and slowly allow your upper body to lean toward the floor and then slowly sit upright again. This can be practice anywhere you have a chair.
• Always do neck exercises slowly and gently. Slowly rotate your neck to the left and right. Ease yourself into the discomfort you find there. After rotating your neck, you may choose to bend your neck from left to right and then reverse it.
• A third exercise to roll your neck slowly in a circular motion being very careful to do it slowly. I do a few rotations clockwise and then do a few counterclockwise.
• To help strengthen and relax your back, sit on a chair and slowly clasp your hands behind the chair. You will feel tension in your upper arms also.
• Also for the back, you may practice the shoulder shrug by lifting your shoulders up and then slowly lowering them.

Often times, poor posture can aid the tension that you feel. To evaluate your posture, stand with your body facing away from the wall. Ease yourself gently toward the wall to see which part of your body touches the wall first. Then practice bringing your body aligned better without arching your back.

The upper back needs to be strengthened daily in order to help the neck and back. One exercise to help the upper back is to lie face down on the floor. Gently raise your upper body from the floor. Be careful to be gentle with yourself and repeat this stretching exercise several times.

You may want to use an action board. This can be a large bulletin board (I use 22×34 and I have 4 of them). My bulletin boards also have copies of paintings, nature, and the ocean along with my goals.

You may use 3×5 cards on your bulletin board under 4-5 goal headings. Be sure to include the estimated deadline for each goal. You may use general headings: such as, goals-dreams-problems-solutions. You may choose to add post-it notes to your index cards. I use dressmakers’ pins which are long straight pins. I use these because they make smaller holes in my pictures and they work great on the bulletin. You may want to save the old index cards to watch your progress. By using multi-colored cards you can easily track your progress with a glance.

If you have the room, you may choose to cover the entire wall with corkboard to have a large area for your planning.

In a large office setting with meeting room capabilities for large groups, the walls may be lined with dry eraser boards to use for brain-storming sessions which may be a weekly event.

Remember to be specific with planned completion dates. Some sample goals may be:

• Personal development

Develop a support group of 3-5 people during the next month.

Join a volunteer group; for example. Teach someone to read by joining a literary group.

Sign up for computer class at a local college.

Arrange to take some tests that show your interests and/or abilities.

• Family development

Set aside one weekend per month to arrange special dates with your spouse.

Schedule separate quality time with each of your children.

• Spiritual growth

Set aside 15-20 minutes each day to practice meditation.

Choose a topic about spirituality and study everything about it.

Using a steno pad or similar notebook, find a topic for study in a concordance of the Bible or other spiritual literature and record the verses you find for the topic you’ve chosen.

On 3×5 index cards, record valuable quotations for spiritual qualitites you want to work on.

Marketing statement: in 25 words or less, define what you believe your work offers to the world.

Finish reading here.

Better Ideal Weight Body Calculations

Calories in Celery

Cardio Exercises to Burn Major Calories!

Cardiovascular Exercise Principles – Learn Cardio Exercises

Diet Blog – Weight Loss Reality Check

Free Calorie Counter & Weight Loss Calculator: Calories, BMI, BMR, RMR

Nutrition Data’s Nutrition Facts Calorie Counter

Psybersquare

WebMD Fitness and Exercise Center – Information on fitness and exercise programs for a healthy lifestyle

Weight Loss Diets

• I quit weighting myself.
• I quit measuring food. The food that definitely has to measured are the foods we least want to measure.
• I believed because I quit drinking alcohol in 1976 and cigarettes in 1988 that I could begin eating the foods that I have little self-control over.
• I thought I was too “smart” to let my food choices interfere with my personal happiness. Not surprisingly, I started AA as an “expert” on how to drink. That didn’t last long. I love the long silence in a 12 step meeting after you have said something stupid. I learned to listen to the silence and to stay away from those who piped up and agreed with me.

Before you begin your new food plan:

1.  Before you begin any weight loss plan, clear out your home of all the foods that are high calories with low food nutrition.

2.  Read all food labels.

3.  Count your food intake by calories in order to keep your daily plan positive.

4.  Allow yourself 1200-1500 calories. Knowing ahead of time which time of the day you are more likely to cheat, always have on hand high fiber drinks or foods. I am currently using Crystal Light Hunger Satisfaction. You can use it in 16 ounces of water. It has 30 calories per packet and 5 grams of fiber daily.

5.  Keeping a calorie journal for the first week helps to keep you accurate.

6.  Always include 30-35 grams of fiber.

7.  Prepare yourself for your new food plan:

Are you ready to begin losing weight?

Check your commitment

Daily food plan

List of 100-200 calorie foods

The basic foods I use

The beginning of weight control

Salads from the food network

Use these fiber links to feel full

High Energy Food Plan:

High energy diet basics

The high energy diet differences

My basic high energy diet 1

My basic high energy diet 2

My basic high energy diet 3

My basic high energy diet 4

My basic daily exercise plan:

Which exercise best suits your mood?

Tests to evaluate your physical health

Fitness is best as a daily habit

Keeping track of your progress

How out-of-shape are you? Use these links to measure your body fat– BMI measures your body mass index:

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.html

How many calories do you need to omit in order to lose weight? Calculate the daily calorie deficit required to reach goal weight:

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_loss.html

What is the satiety index?

http://www.acu-cell.com/gi.html http://www.vegetariantimes.com/document/563

http://www.nutritiondata.com/topics/glycemic-index#satiety

http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm

All about cravings:

Chart that tells you what your body needs when you have specific cravings and gives you healthy food choices for each craving:

http://www.naturopathyworks.com/pages/cravings.php

Emergency appetite control foods:

http://www.newstarget.com/003550.html

0Hunger management for “boomers”:

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/food/Articles/19_ways_to_fight_food_cravings_and_win_the_war_on.html

How to conquer cravings:

http://www.fitfaq.com/conquer-cravings.html

Beat late-night food cravings:

http://www.fitfaq.com/beat-food-cravings.html

Why we crave:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20030819-000001.html

Five tips to stop food cravings for easy weight loss:

http://www.phtimes.org/Food-and-Drink/five-tips-to-stop-food-cravings-for-easy-weight-loss.html