A Final Word On Diet And Your Asthma

I debated whether or not to discuss how to calculate the calories you need to stay alive or to lose weight. Personally, I don't believe in counting calories because it reminds me of that four-letter word "diet." If you really need to lose weight, the last thing you want to do is starve yourself. People who starve themselves and rapidly lose excess pounds are destined to regain even more weight. This is why diets fail miserably!

 

As far as our bodies are concerned, we are metabolically still living in the time of saber-toothed tigers, when it was literally feast or famine with the food supply. Starvation makes your body respond as if there is a famine; it doesn't know you're just dieting. So, believing your life is in jeopardy, your body tries to hang on to every calorie it can by storing those calories as fat. This is why rapid weight loss only sets people up for failure: when they stop the weight-loss program, they inevitably gain back the weight they lost.

 

Though I hate to use the phrase "lose weight," over 50 percent of Americans have a weight problem so we might as well talk about it. To really lose weight, you have to stop trying to lose weight. Concentrate your efforts on healthy living and the weight loss will happen by itself. You should never starve yourself, because starvation only tells your body to start packing on the fat. Eat three satisfying healthy meals a day and avoid snacking between meals. Depending on how much weight you need to lose, give yourself six months to two years to achieve an ideal weight. The most successful weight loss occurs slowly, allowing your body to adapt to a trimmer you. Also, talk to your doctor or another qualified healthcare professional about weight loss.

 

If you want to calculate your ideal weight, use the following formulas:

 

Ideal Body Weight for Men: 110 pounds + 5 pounds per inch over five feet tall

Ideal Body Weight for Women: 100 pounds + 5 pounds per inch over five feet tall

 

While this is an "ideal" target weight, a variation of five to ten pounds in either direction can still be considered normal weight.

 

Although I do not advocate counting calories, I do recommend you read food labels, which give you information on calories and percentages of recommended daily fat per serving. For instance, if a serving has 50 percent of the recommended fat, the food is clearly fattening. Conversely, a product with only 2 percent of the daily fat is probably less fattening. Once again, you have to be careful of some "fat-free" products that have absolutely no fat but, to improve taste, are loaded with salt or 300 calories of pure sugar. The lesson here is that you should be suspicious of foods that claim to be "low-fat" or "fat-free." Some manufacturers make this claim but load their products with fat-forming sugars or make their portions unreasonably small. Remember, when reading food labels, pay attention to calories and fat per portion, as well as portion size.

 

The honest calculus of weight loss is that you must burn more calories than you consume, a feat that is nearly impossible to do safely through diet alone. To successfully lose those pounds, you need to speed up your body's metabolic rate so your cells burn more calories. The best way to do this is through exercise. In fact, a healthy diet combined with regular exercise is the best and only way to achieve permanent weight loss. Even better news: Exercise may also help your asthma and allow you to live a longer and healthier life.