New Year’s resolutions are in full swing, most of which revolve around losing weight and getting in shape. If this describes you, how confident are you that this will be your year? New Year’s resolutions are notoriously short-lived for many reasons.
According to Dr. Jessica Bartfield, a weight loss specialist from Loyola Center for Metabolic Surgery & Bariatric Care, only 20 percent of those who plan on losing weight are successful. She gives her top four reasons so many dieters fail to lose weight. We’ll give you the remedies.
1. Underestimating Calories Consumed
Dr. Bartfield: “Most people (even experts!) underestimate the number of calories they eat per day.”
Our Suggestion: If you’re the type that prefers to wing it when it comes to eating, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s not enough to want to lose weight. You have to prepare, plan and research what you’re going to eat.
Like Dr. Bartfield, we suggest writing down everything you eat. If you prefer an old-fashioned written food journal, that’s great. However, there many digital solutions that offer a more comprehensive experience with access to your favorite foods’ calorie count, weight tracking, and many other features. (more…)
At the beginning of fall I got bit by the chili bug and was eating the stuff non-stop for weeks. I was offering it up to friends, feeding it to my husband and packing it as a quick lunch for work almost daily. I didn’t realized I’d hit my max until a friend and I were discussing ideas for an upcoming dinner party and she said “anything butchili.” I agreed with her at the time but secretly I thought, “What are you talking about? I could chili year round!” And I do.
My all-time favorite chili companion is cornbread, which I made plenty of this fall drizzled in a little maple syrup for good measure. Absolutely smitten with the traditional kind, I had never tried the blue which is apparently healthier for you than the yellow stuff. Why? Let me explain.
Did you know pistachios are considered theskinny nut? And to think, I always just liked them because they tasted good. Looks like I was missing half the good news about this little green nut.
Although I snack on pistachios often I seldom use them in cooking. However, because of their unique flavor and crunchy texture they make a brilliant addition to dishes like crusted chicken, ice cream and sautees (find recipes below). Who would’ve thought something so naturally healthy could also be so delicious?
Health benefits: As mentioned above, scientists have discovered that pistachios are the ideal snack for weight loss. This is because the nuts’ fat is absorbed into the body making them lower in calories than previously thought.
In addition to being a considerably low-calorie snack, pistachios are also high in vitamins and minerals like vitamins A and E, protein, healthy fats and antioxidants. Other studies have also shown pistachios to help lower LDL or “bad” cholesterol, increase HDL or “good” cholesterol, and fight inflammation. (more…)
It may seem counterintuitive to take in calories before you head to the gym to burn them off, but eating a healthy bite beforehand can help you make the most of your workout. No matter what kind of activity you’re planning, you can use these tips to fuel up for fitness:
Eat when it feels best. Eating one hour before your workout is a good general rule, but everyone’s body is different. For instance, some people may feel uncomfortable or bloated trying to exercise after a snack or meal while others may be distracted by a rumbling tummy. Only you know exactly how much you can comfortably eat and how soon before your workout.
Keep track of carbs. Because glucose—a carbohydrate—is your muscles’ preferred source of fuel, you need to go into a workout with enough stored glucose (aka glycogen). If you eat a balanced diet, you should be all set. But if you’re hitting the gym hours after your last meal or snack, you might need a little carb boost; 15 grams should do the trick. (more…)
Not only are all of us making big changes and plans for the new year, but eDiets is doing so, too. One of the more familiar names in dieting, and one of the first to take the industry online, is finalizing a merger with the As Seen on TV brand. The initial announcement was made last fall and will soon complete a stock-for-stock buyout that will remove eDiets as a public company and make it a wholly owned subsidiary of the direct marketing giant.
“It’s an intriguing business acquisition, for a TV company to own a diet company” said Steve Rogai, CEO of As Seen on TV, when we spoke him this week about the merger. He explained that with eDiets being a direct marketing company that sells a food product and As Seen on TV selling a variety of consumer goods direct to consumer, it makes this new business a “synergistic fit.”
eDiets’ performance in recent years hasn’t been remarkable. When the initial report was made in August, InvestorPlace.com reports that eDiets was being purchased “for 80 cents a share — roughly double what the micro-cap stock had been selling for.”
Rogai commented that eDiets has had its ups and downs, “sometimes more down than up.” He also described this merger as a smart business move that would save eDiets more than one million dollars a year by no longer being a public company.
As for the meal delivery industry as a whole, it’s profitable and will continue to be so. Per a May 2024 report by John LaRosa’s Marketdata Enterprises, he told us they had “identified approximately 30 companies participating in the meal delivery business. We estimated the market’s value at $925 million.” At that time he also projected this segment of the diet market to reach $1.09 billion in revenue by 2024.
What can we expect to see for eDiets in this new year? Not only are they working to introduce a more competitive meal delivery option, but they’ve already signed and announced an endorsement deal with entertainer CeeLo Green. A judge on the Voice and soon be the face of his own Las Vegas show, Loberace, CeeLo made it known late last year that he wanted to get healthy in 2024. (more…)
Katie Lowe may seem like your typical 25-year-old girl living in the London and loving life, but one look at her journey and you’ll quickly realize she has quite a unique story. Katie had always been heavy, struggling with her weight even as a child. But after an accident at the age of 19 left her unable to walk for two years, the weight piled on.
At her heaviest Katie weighed 290 pounds and she grew quite desperate. But after making health a priority and changing the way she approached diet and fitness, the pounds began to fall off.
After getting off track in late 2024, Katie turned around and created her blog, Fat Girl, PhD, in 2024 as a resolution of sorts – to hold herself accountable to the healthy lifestyle changes she sought to make.
Today Katie is a trim 160 pounds, just 15 pounds shy of her goal weight and a completely changed person. We had the pleasure of speaking with Katie recently about her incredible journey. Here’s what she had to say.
What specific changes did you make to your diet to lose weight? I tried to cut out processed foods wherever I could, switching sugary snacks and drinks for healthy, nutritious meals. I also had to learn to eat the right amount – because when you’re eating the right things, you have to eat more of them than you think! Losing weight doesn’t mean starving yourself – it means eating well and enjoying real food. (more…)
The validity of the BMI measurement tool has long been a point of contention among health professionals and consumers alike. A new report will not only cast further doubt, but actually go one step further: overweight people may live longer than their “normal” weight counterparts.
According to the report involving nearly three million people from nearly 100 studies, those who were overweight had a lower risk of death than people who were normal weight, defined as a BMI range of 18.5 – 25.
“Fat per se is not as bad as we thought,” said Dr. Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, Irvine, in a story at New York Times.
While that may sound controversial, the fact of the matter is that health is often so much more complex than we’d like. Weight is but one factor in our health. You may be heavy with normal blood pressure, or thin with dangerously high cholesterol or blood sugar levels. (more…)
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) conducted a survey and discovered that for most fitness professionals, this career was not their first job. Many had pursued other avenues only to find that the fitness industry was where their true passions lied. It assumed that many find their love for fitness later in life. Many in the business will tell you that since they were devoting the hours of a full time job to their own fitness, they decided they might enjoy getting paid along the way.
“I was in banking for 15 years before making the leap to personal training full time,” said Pamela Hernandeez, a personal trainer at ThriveFit.com. “In 2024, when the financial services industry collapsed, I was fortunate not lose my job but a lot of people I worked with did. It made me step back and realize how much I had come to dislike my job.”
She kept both jobs for a while as she she pursued her ACSM CPT fitness certifications and to ensure her passion and the clients would be there to pay the bills. As a banker, she says she hated what she was doing and how it didn’t offer any real value for people’s lives. With a full-time fitness career, she gets to make a huge impact on the lives of others. “I knew I had found my calling. I was able to quit my banking career in June 2024. I have never looked back!”
Sound like you?
Some of the most popular careers in the fitness industry include health coach, personal trainer, dietitian, spin instructor, and Zumba instructor. Before you consider taking one of these paths this year, learn more about what each profession entails. (more…)
Consumer Reports just released their top diets of 2024. They reached out to 9,000 of their subscribers to get honest, real-life feedback about some of the most popular diets on the market. This comes a couple of weeks after we compiled our fifth annual Most Popular Diets of the Year list, featuring 25 brands and products that our readers favored most in 2024. There are some strong similarities and also some big differences between the two lists.
When it comes to commercial diets, Weight Watchers ranks number one on both lists. It seems, according to the Consumer Reports feedback, that users like that there’s no specific food that has to be purchased, it’s just a matter of counting those PointsPlus values. Another diet high on both of our lists is Medifast. Those who replied to the Consumer Reports survey (of 9,000 readers) noted that they lost the most weight with Medifast than with any of the other diets. A few of the big names were ranked lower in the report; for instance, Nutrisystem, which ranked six on our list, and Jenny Craig, which did not rank for us, were not seen as fan favorites in this survey. It seems many are not big fans of the foods in these programs. (more…)
Kami Rivera’s biggest contributors to weight gain were a poor diet and neglecting exercise. These unhealthy habits snowballed in her late 20s and led her to weigh nearly 250 pounds. In 2024, things grew worse as a heart condition required Kami to have surgery. As a result she felt sidelined from any attempts to get healthy. Looking back she admits she leaned on that event for a long time as a crutch. She’d gotten into such a rut that she began believing her problems would be solved by doing nothing at all.
But in October 2024, things began to improve as Kami started eating better. And 2024 brought a New Year’s resolution to get more active. Her activity of choice? Title Boxing.
“I tried to think of a million excuses for why I didn’t want to do it, but I live right across the street from the [Title] studio,” she said. “I was able to hang for the first class, then I started going twice a week. Eventually each class got easier and easier and I was going about five times a week and maybe six if I could squeeze in a Sunday.”
Unlike ever before Kami was working focused on getting in shape and gaining both knowledge and inspiration from her boxing classes. Though she’d had a treadmill, total gym and weight bench at her home for a long time, she realized she’d just never found the motivation to use them. With boxing it was different. (more…)
Ten years ago, Today Show weather anchor Al Roker decided he needed a drastic change in his lifestyle when he tipped the scale at 340 pounds. He decided to have a gastric bypass surgery in 2002 and lost 100 pounds in eight months, eventually reaching 190 pounds lost. Then, five years ago, he received the devastating news that his mother had cancer, and his weight crept back up as he dealt with her terminal illness. After regaining and losing another 40 pounds through a 28-day cleanse and strict diet and exercise regimen, Roker writes about it all in his memoir “Never Goin’ Back,” released Dec. 31, 2024.
He talked about shedding the “fat guy image” and his new book this morning on Today.
Roker relates in his book that he chose to have bariatric surgery after losing his father to lung cancer in 2001. He had yo-yo dieted for years with no lasting results. He describes his aha! moment in an interview with PARADE magazine:
“[My father] was at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and I would go in every day. We’d talk and joke, and then one day he got serious and said, ‘Look, we both know I’m not going to be here to help you with my grandkids, so you gotta promise you’re going to lose weight.” Seven days later he was gone. A few weeks afterward, [Deborah and I] found out we were pregnant with our son Nicky. I said, “Okay, I’m going to have to do something.”
Roker found success with a gastric bypass, but admits it is not for everyone, calling it just another tool for losing weight that was a very difficult choice for him. When his mother got sick, his healthy living routine went to the wayside as he balanced spending as much time as he could with her with the normal pressures of his work and family life. He thought he could handle a few slip-ups with his diet, eventually reverting back to old habits and secret binge eating, and used food as a form of self-medication. (more…)
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