5 Drinks to Help You LOSE WEIGHT!

Check out these 5 drinks that could help you lose weight!

1. Ice cold water
You'll burn an extra 200 calories a day by drinking eight glasses of ice cold water because...Your body has to burn calories (or fat) in order to heat the ice cold water back up to your body temperature. The amount of calories you burn (and the weight you lose) will rack up over time as you drink Ice cold water everyday. A German study says drinking about 2 extra glasses of water can boost your metabolism by 30% and they figure when you drink about 1.5 liters of water a day you'll lose an extra 5 lbs a year.

2. Milk
Milk is high in calcium and calcium can boost weight loss by increasing fat breakdown in fat cells. This doesn't mean you should go out and drink gallons of milk everyday - but adding milk to your diet in moderation can double the rate of fat you lose.

Different studies say different things about milk and weight loss... some say you can lose 30, 50, and one study even said 70% more weight than people who don't include 3-4 servings of dairy (milk) a day.

3. Green Tea
Drinking 3-5 cups of green tea everyday increases your metabolism so you can burn 35-43% more fat during the day. You can follow this recipe to make your own homemade green tea:

Green tea to boost your metabolism:
           
1 teaspoon of Fresh Ginger
           
6 Green Tea Bags (no need to brew) 
           
3-4 cups of Water
           
1 tablespoon of stevia/low cal sweetener (or add to taste) 
           
5 teaspoons 
fresh Lemon Juice
½ teaspoon of lemon peel

Pour all ingredients in pitcher - refrigerate overnight, add ice and serve. Enjoy this refreshing drink before your morning workout!

4. Vegetable Juice
Drinking a glass of vegetable juice before your meals may cause you to eat 135 fewer calories, according to a study done at Penn. State University. And even if you can't make vegetable juice... drinking a couple glasses of water before meals will also make you eat much less so you lose more weight.

5. Whey protein
Whey protein helps you release appetite suppressing hormones that curb your cravings. In a study, people drank either whey or casein and 90 minutes later they were allowed to eat freely at a buffet table. The people that drank whey protein ate significantly fewer calories.

December 6, 2010

Oprah Opens Up About Thyroid Condition

Everything Oprah touches, it turns to gold right? Well, not the cookies at least. As it turns out, O is claiming that it's not her fault for her recent weight gain of about 20 pounds. In the most recent issue of her magazine, she writes that she is dealing with hypothyroidism. No offense of anything, obviously Oprah has a really slow metabolism. Right?

"My body was turning on me," she wrote. "First hyperthyroidism, which sped up my metabolism and left me unable to sleep for days. (Most people lose weight. I didn't.) Then hypothyroidism, which slowed down my metabolism and made me want to sleep all the time."

Problems involving you thyroid have a direct effect on your metabolism if you are not familiar with it. Often time people who have problems involving their thyroid do not know it or it diagnosed very late in life. However, it is very easy to check for thyroid problems through simple blood tests. If you are getting your cholesterol checked, your doctor can use the same blood sample, just ask to be tested.

Now for my diva input. I feel for Oprah, really I do. My mother has a hypoactive thyroid, and when she should be losing weight with regular exercise and diet, it's much harder for her than someone like myself. However, I'm also 30 years younger. I think Oprah places so much emphasis on her diet and exercise that the public constantly looks to see how she is doing. It's her own personal life long battle. She will forever be a Yo-Yo dieter. She has so much money, and since she cannot keep off the pounds with personal trainers, chef's, all the plastic surgery she could ever want, etc... it seems kinda important for her to give us an explanation.
"If Oprah can't lose weight, what chance do I have?" some people may ask themselves. Well, Oprah has a thyroid problem, that's why. I think it's a silly excuse for her recent weight gain (which I did not, and still DO not notice). Is she trying to bring herself down to a level that her viewers can relate to because they can't relate to her on any other level?

Eating disorders, drug problems, rehab, medical conditions... celebrities seem to know how to garner publicity, and I'm sorry but I think this is just one of those for Oprah. Call me out, if you think I'm being too harsh, but let's face the fact: A lot of overweight people have thyroid problems. Oprah is not the first or the only one, so why is the media treating it like it's some epidemic.

Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to two of my friends in college who have hyperactive thyroids. If you don't have a friend with one, don't go looking for them. Cher and Caitlin are two of my favorite people in the entire world, however they can eat everything and anything they want, have WAY too much energy all the time and are a blast to hang out with. Cher used to bring extra large M&M bags to class and eat them through the lecture. After we'd go to starbucks and she would get a frappaccino and some cookie brownie thing. She one day decided to cut out pizza from her diet. She dropped pounds in 5 days. Caitlin, would only eat bagels, pizza, chicken wings, and Joey Bags (A buffalo chicken cheese steak sub from Freddy's on Main Street) our senior year. She lost weight. Sounds awesome right? Not so much. One has to take an extremely expensive prescription every day. One has mini heart attacks in which her heart beats way too fast. There are many other issues that go along with their hyperactive thyroids that I am not familiar enough with to tell you all about, but thyroid problems, if detected, can be managed like most medical conditions.

By the way, Cher and Caitlin are both extremely skinny if you couldn't tell.

October 19, 2008

Celebrity Drive & Perfectionism Leads to Disorders

Who is the latest celebrity to admit to having an eating disorder? You'll never guess who else she outs!

Sorry I have been MIA for awhile. Things have been super busy for us at Diet.com. Finally it's Friday and I could use a serious long weekend! I am anti-columbus day, but hey, I'll take the day off from work. Any way, here is what you all have missed in celebrities and diet while I've been away.


-Brittney Snow is speaking out about her stint with anorexia in this weeks People magazine. Dropping down to as low at 87 pounds by age 14, Snow is now reaching out to other women with eating disorders. She appears in an educational video for the Jed Foundation, which brings awareness about mental health disorders and suicide in college students. Snow says it makes her upset that people think she is appearing in the video for publicity, which is often what it looks like when celebrities come out admitting a problem like an eating disorder. Here is the paragraph that was most eye opening for me:

The therapist diagnosed me with anorexia, exercise bulimia- instead of throwing up you go to the gym for hours-depression and body dysmorphia. All that, and yet I still had a career! It's shocking how many people in the business have great careers and this too, and don't talk about it. It's that drive and perfectionism.

October 5, 2008