More Cheating on Your Diet

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for many people who are on "diets" is the abstinence from alcohol. I say, drink wisely. If you really want an alcoholic beverage, try sipping one after you have eaten a healthy and filling meal. It can be your dessert. Happy Hours can be lethal to your diet as you are more likely to overindulge and crave junk food. So make Happy Hour an occasion that doesn't occur every day.

Sipping water between bites of an indulgence or between sips of an alcoholic beverage will help make the indulgence or drink last longer and you will eat or drink less.

Cheating on Your Diet with Drink

There are a couple of things about drink. First is the one that probably came to mind when you read the title. alcohol. If your treat is to have an alcoholic drink, then have it after you have eaten a good meal or while you are eating a good meal. Then just sip at it. If you drink it afterward, you can think of it as your dessert. It is better not to combine drinking with happy hour as you are likely to overindulge in alcohol and in junk snack foods.

The second kind of drinking I want to talk about is water. Sipping water between bites of your "cheating" food will help it last longer and let you savor it. In addition, you will be giving your body some much needed water.

Not related to drink, but often goes along with drink are munchies. Be smart about which munchies you choose. Pretzels and baked potato chips are 2 of the better munchies. I would recommend that you put a limit on how much you munch. In other words, only put out a small bowl. Better yet, use raw nuts as munchies!

7 Ways to Lessen Stress in Your Life

There are some things to avoid to start with to decrease stress in your life. Avoid drugs and alcohol as these are often depressants and make the situation worse. Using them for stress can evolve into a dependence which has a whole other set of problems for you. Medications may be used, but I would recommend counseling first along with some good positive habits which I'll be talking about over the next few days.

Alcohol - The Cons

One of the things that alcohol is associated with is an increase in blood pressure. Of course because it is broken down in the liver, any individual with liver disease should not be drinking any alcohol. In addition, alcohol can exacerbate heart burn and acid reflux.

Drink alcohol cautiously if you are trying to lose weight. The calories are mostly empty and do not make the brain think that you are full. In fact alcohol can stimulate the appetite and you will actually eat more calories than you should.

So use caution when drinking alcohol. The biggest factor is moderation.

Alcohol

As I have mentioned before alcohol does have some beneficial effects. One of the things that alcohol does is relax blood vessels, while it boosts levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, thereby decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke.

The trick here is to keep the consumption of alcohol down. The max for women should be one glass per day and for men 2 glasses per day.

Red wine contains resveratrol which provides most of the beneficial effects mentioned above. The other thing about red wine is that it is provides antioxidants as well, which we know the body needs to protect itself from disease.

#2 Healthy Habit

I have said this multiple times before, but the eating health is essential to produce a longer life. A British study showed that inidividuals who eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day live longer healthier lives. This should be no surprise.

Also included in those studies was the fact that drinking alcohol in moderation, exercise and not smoking contributed to an extra 14 years of healthy life.

So there is more than just eating right.

Lastly, Detoxifying the Skin

The skin is the last organ I'll talk about cleansing. I'm not talking about soap and water here, although that is important as well. The skin has to be able to breathe in order to cleanse itself. If you are applying oils, the skin's pores become clogged and it is not able to breathe. The first thing to do is to stop applying creams or lotions which contain oils. Oil is not what lubricates the skin. What lubricates the skin is water. The skin should be kept moist and supple with creams or lotions that are water based.

Also look at the cream or lotion that you are using. Does it contain alcohol? There are actually some good alcohols and there are bad alcohols. The molecular weight of the alcohol will determine if it is a drying or moisturizing alcohol. Cetyl and stearyl alcohol both are of a molecular weight such that they actually attract water. If you cream just says alcohol or ethyl alcohol, then it will be more drying than moisturizing.

Eating fruits and vegetables will also help cleanse the skin. The antioxidants in fruits and vegetables as well as supplements actually end up coming out through the skin. This will help remove toxins that have built up in the skin.

Of course bathing is important. Use care with the types of soaps and cleansers that you use on the skin. Again, soaps can be drying which can inhibit the skin from functioning normally. I talked a little about this previously.

Detoxification

When I talk about detoxification, I am speaking about detoxifying the body but not about detoxifying from alcohol. Although alcohol causes toxicity in the body and we see the end result of drinking alcohol excessively ends with you developing liver disease because the liver becomes so toxic that it can no longer function.

You see a lot out there these days about cleansing and detoxification. And the question you should be asking is, is it safe and do I need to do it. The answer is that it can be safe if done properly and yes you should do it in order to detoxify and cleanse the liver. My first thought when I heard about cleansing was enemas to cleanse the bowel. This is not such a great idea. There are ways to cleanse the liver and other organs involved in detoxification and help you to become healthier.

Over the next few days I'll be talking about the benefits of cleansing and then I will get into how to do it.

Diet Tip #9

I don't like to tell you that you can't have something, but something you should definitely decrease or stop in your diet is alcohol. It doesn't mean you can't ever have it, but if you can cut it out for a few weeks, this will definitely jump start your diet.

Once you have lost some weight and are making true life style changes, you can add a little alcohol back into your diet.

One of the things that alcohol does is change the brain chemicals such that your internal hormonal balance will be thrown off. This will make it extremely difficult to lose weight.