Five tips to start fresh in the new year

New Year's resolutions have become as synonymous with failure as with self-improvement. According to a survey conducted by LIVESTRONG.COM, 76 percent of people who made a 'weight loss' resolution say they have not been successful at keeping the weight off. Resolutions revolving around getting fit can seem daunting without the proper guidance for seeing them through. LIVESTRONG.COM has a list of five small changes to help accomplish fitness and nutritional goals for the New Year.

1. Clear Out That Kitchen
Toss high-calorie, high-fat foods and abstain from buying similar products. The purge will spur an instant sense of accomplishment and make it easier to maintain a healthy plan. You should dispose of all tempting foods, including sugary cereals, cake and cookie mixes, candy, ice cream and fried items.

2. Plan Your Meals
Use cookbooks or online resources focused on healthy recipes to map out days and weeks of nutritious food. Selecting healthy options that taste good and are tailored to fit your preferences will prevent you from nibbling on the bad stuff.

3. Go Local and Go Green
Organic and locally grown food items are often tastier and more satisfying than their conventional counterparts. Shop your local farmers markets or health-food stores to find these items. When you return from shopping, immediately wash and prepare the produce so it is ready to eat when you are hungry.

4. Use Available Resources
Sign up and follow fitness and nutrition platforms online as an easy go-to resource for questions and additional information. LIVESTRONG.COM's MyPlate is a great tool for tracking your food intake and fitness routine with over 625,000 food items and 2,000 fitness activities.

5. Set a Fitness Goal
Assess your previous physical activity in the past year and set a realistic goal to gradually improve fitness. Get a workout partner to help you stay motivated, and don't forget to track your progress!
LIVESTRONG.COM offers nutrition and fitness information for lifelong health and wellness. LIVESTRONG.COM's practical tools, expert resources and engaged community provide support to help you achieve your healthy living goals. At LIVESTRONG.COM, small, daily changes lead to big results and lifelong success stories.

Source  http://www.sacbee.com/2010/12/27/3282982/five-tips-to-start-fresh-in-the.html

New Year Health Tips

New Year Health Tips

Today, I am going to share few of the very interesting articles on New year health tips for everyone.

While i was surfing online for the best new year health tips for the coming year 2015, I could see few articles that makes me to publish on my health tips blog so that people would be benefitted from reading and following those tips.

Health Tips for a New Year 2015

20 Tips to Help You Keep Your New Year's Resolutions

Once we have put some thought into our vision for the future, and set goals that are based on health rather than perfectionism, then the following simple steps can help you develop and maintain the resolve to achieve your goals.

1. Be realistic.
2. Aim for self-improvement and learning.
3. Line your goals up with your priorities.
4. Set a realistic time frame for change.
5. Focus on self-care and nurturance through the change.
6. Develop your patience.
7. Be honest with yourself - change requires commitment.
8. Look for ways to reduce stress, as it will undermine your discipline and your health.
9. Be prepared to try something new.
10. Be prepared to learn from your mistakes.
11. Celebrate the small steps.
12. Be curious and open to the learning.
13. Look for balance in life.
14. Stay focused.
15. Use self-care and self-reflection to help you accomplish your goals.
16. Look for others who share your goals, and support each other.
17. Have 'safe' people who will encourage you during your highs and lows.
18. Take actions to commit to good decision making.
19. Be non-defensive and open to examining poor decision making.
20. Have some fun along the way - joy can fuel positive change.

Top 10 Healthiest New Year's Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions are a bit like babies: They’re fun to make but extremely difficult to maintain.

Read more Top 10 Healthiest New Year's Resolutions

15 health tips for the new year

Year after year we make resolutions to exercise regularly, eat well, and give up smoking and other bad habits. Following such basic rules can cut heart disease risk by 80 percent, diabetes risk by 90 percent and cancer risk by 50 percent, according to the Harvard Nurses' Health Study.

Read more 15 health tips for the new year

9 Healthy New Year’s Resolutions

Want to downsize your figure? Start downsizing your dishes. Studies show using smaller plates and bowls promote weight loss because they help to curb overeating.

Read more 9 Healthy New Year’s Resolutions

8 Tips for Making and Keeping Healthy New Year's Resolutions

If you are the type of person who makes but never keeps New Year's resolutions, these suggestions can help you make healthy -- and attainable -- goals this year.

    1. Don't abandon the idea of setting resolutions because you have broken them in the past. You may need to simply readjust the type and number of goals you're setting for yourself.

    2. Do be realistic. A resolution to run a marathon by year's end is likely unrealistic for an inexperienced exerciser. Likewise, resolving to stop all your unhealthy habits at once is likely to fail. Pick a safe, attainable goal with a realistic time frame. For example, if your resolution is to eat healthier, begin by eliminating one unhealthy food from your diet at a time, not all unhealthy foods.

Read more 8 Tips for Making and Keeping Healthy New Year's Resolutions

5 Diet Resolutions for New Year

Are you making bold resolutions on January 1 to "eat right" -- whatever that means? Stop trying to overhaul your entire diet in a day! Resolve to think small and you can reach any diet goal -- one focused step at a time. Why not start with these simple tips?

Read more 5 Diet Resolutions for New Year

10 Tips to Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolution

Chances are at some time in your life you’ve made a New Year’s resolution — and then broken it. This year, stop the cycle of resolving to make change and then not following through. If your resolution is to take better care of yourself and get healthy, you will have a much better year if your resolution sticks. Here are 10 tips to help you get started.  

1.  Be Realistic

The surest way to fall short of your goal is to make your goal unattainable. For instance, resolving to NEVER eat your favorite food again is setting you up to fail. Instead, strive for a goal that is attainable, such as avoiding it more often than you do now.

2.  Plan Ahead

Don’t make your resolution on New Year’s Eve. If you wait until the last minute, it will be based on your mindset that particular day. Instead, it should be planned well before December 31 arrives.

3.  Outline Your Plan

Decide how you will deal with the temptation to skip that exercise class or have that piece of cake. This could include calling on a friend for help, practicing positive thinking and self-talk, or reminding yourself how your “bad” will affect your goal.

4.  Make a “Pros” and “Cons” List

It may help to see a list of items on paper to keep your motivation strong. Develop this list over time, and ask others to contribute to it. Keep your list with you and refer to it when you need help keeping your resolve.

5.  Talk About It

Don’t keep your resolution a secret. Tell friends and family members who will be there to support your resolve to change yourself for the better or improve your health. The best-case scenario is to find a buddy who shares your New Year’s resolution and motivate each other.

6.  Reward Yourself

This doesn’t mean that you can eat an entire box of chocolates if your resolution is to eat a better diet. Instead, celebrate your success by treating yourself to something you enjoy that doesn’t contradict your resolution. If you have been sticking to your promise to eat better, for example, reward yourself with new fitness clothing or by going to a movie with a friend.

7.  Track Your Progress

Keep track of each small success. Short-term goals are easier to keep, and each small accomplishment will help keep you motivated. Instead of focusing on losing 30 pounds, focus on losing the first five. Keep a food journal to help you stay on track, and reward yourself for each five pounds lost.

8.  Don’t Beat Yourself Up

Obsessing over the occasional slip won’t help you achieve your goal. Do the best you can each day, and take one day at a time.

9.  Stick to It

Experts say it takes about 21 days for a new activity to become a habit and six months for it to become part of your personality. It won’t happen overnight, so be persistent and patient!

10. Keep Trying

If you have totally run out of steam when it comes to keeping your resolution by mid-February, don’t despair. Start over again! Recommit yourself for 24 hours. You can do anything for 24 hours. The 24-hour increments will soon build on each other and, before you know it, you will be back on track.

Read more 10 Tips to Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolution

10 Better-for-You New Year’s Resolutions

Making a New Year’s resolution this year? If it’s to lose those pesky 10 pounds—for the sixth year in a row—why not consider making a new, more doable resolution with equally big health payoffs? Take your pick of these 10 attainable resolutions that you can actually tackle this year.

Read more 10 Better-for-You New Year’s Resolutions

100 Ways to Start Your Year Off Light

Healthy Tips for the New Year

With the new year comes new expectations and goals, often accompanied by the fear of falling off the resolutions wagon by month’s end. Make this year different. Put aside over-blown resolutions and commit to making small changes all year to make this year your lightest ever. The benefits: Lose weight, put a bounce in your step, get some calm in the kitchen, and become a healthier you without feeling deprived.

Read more 100 Ways to Start Your Year Off Light

1931 diet tips still relevant today

“The science of nutrition travels so rapidly that it is almost impossible to keep up with it,” wrote Lenna Frances Cooper in her textbook, “Nutrition in Health and Disease.”

Wow, is she right! Nutrition research findings hit the headlines daily. It’s a lot of information to digest. But, get this: She made that observation in 1931.

Cooper, a nurse and dietitian, was a dean at the Battle Creek Health Care Institution in Battle Creek, Mich. She was one of the co-founders of the American Dietetic Association and was appointed to the staff of the U.S. surgeon general.

You know how most folks think of healthy foods as the ones that don’t taste very good? Well, Cooper was even on the case when she wrote in the foreword of her cookbook, “The New Cookery”: “Many food faddists have attempted to prepare wholesome foods but have neglected the almost equally important requirement — palatability.”

In honor of Cooper’s pioneering diet advice from 1931, here are a few tips to dine out more healthfully today.

● Celebrate the season with a variety of salad greens.

Today: So-called “winter greens,” rich in anti-oxidants and disease-fighting beta carotene and abundant in autumn, include Swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, collards and escarole. Chef Joe Schafer at Parish pairs sweet potato ravioli with the pleasingly bitter notes of Swiss chard.

1931 advice: “The quality of lettuce, which can be obtained all the year round in almost all sections of the country, has improved enormously.”

● Choose the whole-grain version.

Today: You can find whole-grain versions of everything from tortilla chips to doughnuts. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee tells us to eat fewer refined grains. Choose brown rice over white and whole-wheat bread over white. Discover the taste of “ancient” whole grains such as quinoa, spelt and amaranth that are showing up on restaurant menus.

1931 advice: “As a class, the whole cereals are rich in minerals, but these are found particularly in the germ and outer layer, which are usually discarded in the milling process.”

● Break the whole egg for breakfast.

Today: Rethink that egg white omelet. The nutrient choline, found in yolks, helps support the brain’s neurotransmitters and is linked to new memory cell production.

1931 advice: “The egg yolk is of much greater value than the white, as it contains the majority of the minerals and vitamins.”

● Eat like a vegetarian.

Today: Eat more plant-based foods such as vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Check out the vegetarian entrees on menus when dining out, even if you’re not a vegetarian, to increase intake of valuable nutrients including fiber and anti-oxidants.

1931 advice: “Where an overindulgence of meat has been the habit, a recourse to a vegetarian diet often brings excellent results.”

● Dine out healthfully when there’s no time to cook.

Today: Whether it’s lower-fat fast-food favorites at Evos or chef Jeffrey Wall’s perfectly tossed orange and fennel salad with orange basil dressing at La Fourchette, restaurants are offering a greater selection of well-prepared healthful options.

1931 advice: “For cookery, lay wood shavings over the bottom of the firebox. When the wood is burning well, fill the firebox with coal. When the coal is burning without blue flames, close the oven dampers and the front door, but leave open the sliding draft in door.”

O’Neil’s advice: Get back in the time machine, use a smart phone to book dinner reservations, check the online menu for seasonal specialties, reapply lipstick and follow car’s GPS to the restaurant. Meet you there, Lenna!

Carolyn O’Neil is a
registered dietitian and
co-author of “The Dish on Eating Healthy and Being Fabulous!” E-mail her at
carolyn@carolynoneil.com.

Source  http://www.ajc.com/health/1931-diet-tips-still-713563.html

Six Tips to Jump Start Weight Loss in the New Year

Losing weight is at the top of many a New Year’s resolution list. In addition to maintaining a healthy diet and getting enough exercise, what else can one do to make sure those good intentions have a lasting impact throughout the year?

Below are research-based tips from investigators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that may help jump start one’s weight loss progress in the coming year.

1. Keep moving each day. We all know that exercise is crucial to losing weight, but sometimes it’s easier said than done. The task need not be daunting; all it takes to see a weight-loss benefit is 30 to 60 minutes of aerobic activity daily. “You don’t need to be athletic. Just brisk walking or dancing to your favorite music or using an aerobic exercise machine like a stationary bike or treadmill is all you need to do – just try to do it each day,” said Anne McTiernan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Hutchinson Center’s Prevention Center. The exercise doesn’t have to be all at once. “You can break it into 10- or 15-minute sessions throughout the day to get the weight-loss benefit,” she said.

2. Keep a food journal. “By spending a little extra time to write down everything you eat and drink, you’ll be able to see where extra calories sneak in,” said postdoctoral research fellow Caitlin Mason, Ph.D., an exercise and health researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division of the Hutchinson Center. “There are lots of good online tools that can help estimate the calorie content of common foods and track your weight loss progress over time,” she said. 

3. Set realistic goals. “The biggest mistake people make when trying to lose weight is trying to lose too many pounds too fast or setting unrealistic goals,” Mason said. “For long-term success, aim for a slow, steady weight loss of about 1 to 2 pounds a week. No one wants to lose weight only to gain it all back – and often more – a few months later.

4. Set specific goals. Instead of resolving to “lose weight,” which is too general, set several smaller but more specific goals, such as eating five servings of vegetables per day, taking a 15-minute walk at lunch each day or drinking six glasses of water per day. “Adding healthy behaviors to your routine is often easier than telling yourself ‘don’t do this’ or ‘don’t eat that,’” Mason said.

5. Don’t let one slip-up derail your efforts. “Don’t throw your entire routine out the window after one bad day,” Mason said. “Instead, try to identify the specific barriers that got in your way and think through strategies to avoid such challenges in the future.” For example, to avoid the temptation of buying a candy bar while standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, make sure to eat a healthy snack, such as a handful of nuts or a piece of string cheese, before going shopping.

6. Practice yoga. Two observational studies conducted by cancer prevention researcher Alan Kristal, Dr. P.H., a member of the Hutchinson Center’s Public Health Sciences Division, have found an association between regular yoga practice and weight maintenance and weight loss. One of his studies, published in 2005, found that regular yoga practice is associated with the prevention of middle-age spread in normal-weight people and the promotion of weight loss in those who are overweight. A follow-up study published in 2009 found that regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating, and people who eat mindfully are less likely to be obese. “These findings fit with our hypothesis that yoga increases mindfulness in eating and leads to less weight gain over time, independent of the physical activity aspect of yoga practice,” Kristal said. “Mindful eating is a skill that augments the usual approaches to weight loss, such as dieting, counting calories and limiting portion sizes. Adding yoga practice to a standard weight-loss program may make it more effective."

At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, our interdisciplinary teams of world-renowned scientists and humanitarians work together to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Our researchers, including three Nobel laureates, bring a relentless pursuit and passion for health, knowledge and hope to their work and to the world. www.fhcrc.org

Source  http://www.newswise.com/articles/six-tips-to-jump-start-weight-loss-in-the-new-year