Weight Loss Recipes

Successful and sustained weight loss requires all three of the following:

1. Reduction in total calorie (fuel) intake: eating less, reducing size of portions, avoiding snacks.
2. Reducing calorie density (richness): not buying or eating foods over 30% calories from fat (the upper left corner of any nutritional fact label), such as "junk" foods, "fast" foods, sweets and so forth.
3. Increasing calorie expenditure (exercise): walking, bicycling, sports, swimming, treadmill, elliptical trainer...

The problem is that human physiology is fantastic for surviving starvation. This is great if the food runs out, but not so great if food is abundant.

I get a lot of questions about healthy food choices and specifically suggestions or recipes, so here are some useful links to healthy recipes that range from simple to complex, basic to elegant:

New York Times: Recipes for Health
Recipe Source: Diabetic Recipes
All Recipes: Healthy Cooking Recipes
Epicurious: Healthy Food Recipes

Bon appetit!

Causes of Death: a bit of perspective

Here's an interesting graphic from National Geographic, which handily illustrates likelihood of causes of death in US citizens.

By all means, look over these and draw your own conclusions. Please note the enormous risks of dying of heart disease, cancer and stroke compared to everything else and consider how much can be done to reduce their risk of occurring: not smoking, taking a baby aspirin a day, improving your weight, blood pressure or cholesterol without "waiting until my body tells me something is wrong". (Your body telling you something is wrong is you having a heart attack, stroke or cancer.)

Also, consider that risks of seriously harmful side-effects often discussed in papers or on TV (bone disease with Fosamax, muscle toxicity with cholesterol pills...) may be as low as 1 in 10,000 to 1 in a million: that is about the likelihood of you dying by accidental electrocution to 3 times less likely than dying through a fireworks accident.

Should kind of make you go Hmmm....