Slim People in Progress

The CalorieKing

Recently I purchased The CalorieKing Calorie, Fat and Carbohydrate Counter book. It's a small, slim book packed with information about why and how to count calories, lists for over 200 fast food restaurants, a guide for people with diabetes, an alcohol guide, a caffeine guide, counters for fiber, fat, cholesterol, protein and iron, as well as a weight control guide.

You may need a magnifying class to read some of it, but the content is superb. I prefer this over the Weight Watchers guide because there's a heck of a lot more info covered. It's only 9 bucks which is a small investment for me to stay on top and of pay better attention to what I'm putting into my body! It's always kind of shocking to discover how many calories my favorite foods actually have!

You gotta find the motivation where you can

On Saturday I wanted to bail. My week was tough. My eating out of control. Didn't work out much. Felt fat. I didn't want to weigh in at Weight Watchers and was not feeling motivated to work out. Then, when I was surfing around, I went over to The Biggest Loser site and started watching the post-finale interviews with the contestants.

Tara always inspired me. I wanted her to win. She was so strong, competitive and unbelievable in those challenges. She pulled a car and beat all the guys. She ran a marathon with very little training.  That got me off my butt. I did skip WW, but I headed straight to the gym and did a really good cardio and weight workout. And on Sunday I met my running buddies and ran 6 miles - the most I've done in a few weeks and it felt really great. So thank you Tara, for getting me motivated to get back in the exercise groove.

Pound for Pound Challenge to Feed the Hungry is Still On

I received this information via email the other day and want to make sure you know the Pound for Pound Challenge sponsored by The Biggest Loser has been extended to meet the needs of the hungry in the United States.

As you know, In January General Mills, NBC’s The Biggest Loser and Feeding America encouraged Americans to lose weight and feed the hungry with the Pound For Pound Challenge. Americans stepped-up to the task in their communities by stepping on their scales, and thanks to them and the Pound For Pound Challenge partners, more than 6 million pounds of groceries will be delivered to local food banks across the nation.

Due to the continued need to stock food bank shelves throughout the country, the Pound For Pound Challenge will continue until the end of the month with the Last Chance Pledge.  For every pound people pledge to lose this summer, General Mills will donate 14¢ to Feeding America - enough to provide one pound of groceries to a local food bank. The pledge will secure up to 1 million pounds of food for local food banks, and people can simply visit www.biggestloser.com to participate in the cause. Donations will remain in the communities that are most active as distribution is based on ZIP codes of participants. 

Your readers can continue their commitment to help eliminate hunger and you can encourage new participants to pledge to lose weight and get fit with the Last Chance Pledge.

Milk and Weight Loss: Friends or Foes?

Following is a guest post by Sydney Johnston, a free lance health writer. Her take on milk is the opposite of what you hear from Weight Watchers. Read on and you decide how you want to deal with milk in your diet.

Milk and Weight Loss: Friends or Foes?

If we can believe the dairy industry, milk and weight loss go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Celebrities like Brooke Shields, Mariska Hargitay, Sheryl Crow and Glenn Close lounge in magazine ads, earnestly assuring us that their great bodies are the result of drinking milk. But is the link between weight and milk genuine?

"Nutrition Reviews", a respected scientific journal, reviewed 49 different studies and found:

• 41 of the research papers indicated no relationship whatsoever between dairy and weight loss
• Two studies declared that milk and dairy products increased weight, rather than reduced it
• Six of the studies found that folks who drank milk lost weight - but these six were financed by none other than the American Dairy Association

This is very unconvincing evidence. And here are three more thoughts on dairy and weight loss:

1. The Dairy Association promotes "24:24", meaning three glasses, or 24 ounces of milk every day. That's an extra 300 calories that could be "spent" in other ways.

2. Dairy products all contain lactose, which is a very concentrated sugar. Sugar + too much fat ... do we need to say anything else?

Bay To Breakers 12K Run in San Francisco

This past weekend I traveled up to San Francisco to participate in the 98th annual Bay to Breakers 12K Run. It was a hoot. It's a tradition to dress up (we did not), or run naked (we did not do that either!) and to throw tortillas at the the start (not sure why).

I believe about 65,000 people do the run/walk and it seems like the whole city turns out to watch. Tons of great energy.

While waiting in the corral for walkers (I walked so I could enjoy the event with my friend Erica), someone spotted Jerry, the at-home winner of the recent season of The Biggest Loser. I snapped a picture but you'll have to click on it to enlarge and see him in the far background. Everyone started chanting "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" and he hammed it up, flexing his muscles like he did on the finale, for the crowd.

12K is about 7.5 miles and we did it in about 2 hours 20 minutes. It was VERY hot, not normal for San Francisco so we did not push it. Just enjoyed the walk through the City and Golden Gate Park to the ocean.

Here's a video I made from my pics using animoto, a very cool online video creation software (and super easy!).