As a resource to help weight loss, printable weight loss charts are up there with the best of them.  Anyone looking for as much help as they can to lose weight could do themselves a huge favor by using a simple weight loss chart.

This is because charts have been a basic tool used by anyone who is trying to achieve a goal.  A chart that is updated regularly will show a snap shot of the users progress and will motivate and inspire.  It will also show if the user is off track and needs to reassess their program to get back on track.  Using a chart to help lose weight is no different to using a chart to achieve any other goal.  Furthermore, finding printable weight loss charts online is not difficult since there are many sites online that offer free charts that can be printed off and used. A simple search on Google or any search engine will provide many resources.

Once you have your chart, make a note of your measurements and weight so that you know exactly where you started.  Then make a note of how much weight you expect to lose per week.  It is vital that when filling in your weight loss chart that you be realistic.  Nothing will demoralize a dieter faster than not seeing the prescribed results.  If you are aiming for three pounds weight loss per week, then that is what you should put down, putting down a figure higher than what can realistic be achieved means you’re setting yourself up for failure.

What is also great about printable weight loss charts is that achievements and goals can be very easily plotted and seen.  If you hit a goal sooner than you hoped for then you know for a fact that your efforts are paying fruit.  If you can see that there is no way that you will hit a particular weight when you are estimated to, then you can change and reassess your weight loss plans.  And this really is the beauty of these charts.  They can alert you to any necessary changes that you might need to make quickly and keep your morale high.

What these printable weight loss charts also do, is act as a great way for you to bring in the people around you who care about you.  If you’re brave enough to pin one up in a public place where others can see it, they too can cheer you on towards success.

Above all use the chart as a way for you to document your progress and to keep a record of what you did and when you did it.  That way you can look back and feel proud at where you started and where you have ended up!

Most people who want to lose weight have heard about the cabbage soup diet at least once in their life. This diet supposedly helps you to miraculously drop 10-15 pounds in 7 days.  Many people when they first hear about this diet believe that it is “new” or “revolutionary” or even that it’s some sort of “secret” diet.  When in actuality, none of the above is true.

There are a lot of misconceptions about this diet, including the origins.  Some sources claim that the diet was created by a famous doctor; some sources attribute it to respectable hospitals, etc…The diet did not come from a famous doctor or hospital.  The true origins of this diet are unknown to this day.

This diet seems to have first surfaced in the 1980’s.  It spread quickly by fax machine.  Once the internet arrived, it quickly spread that way.  This is one of those fad diets that seems like it will never die or go away.

What is the cabbage soup diet?

The cabbage soup diet is a 7 day eating plan.  The diet, as the name suggests, focuses around a soup which is comprised mainly of cabbage.

The proposed eating plan is :

Day 1 – Cabbage soup and any type of fruit that you would like to eat, except for bananas.

Day 2 – Cabbage soup and any vegetables that you care to eat.  You may also have a baked potato that has a small amount of butter on it.

Day 3 – Cabbage soup plus any fruits or vegetables that you care to eat, with the exception of potatoes or bananas.

Day 4 – Cabbage soup and bananas.  You may eat up to 8 bananas.  You may also drink as much skim milk as you want too.

Day 5 – Cabbage soup and beef.  You may have up to 20 ounces of beef this day along with the cabbage soup.  You may also consume up to 6 tomatoes.

Day 6 – Cabbage soup and unlimited beef.  This day you can have as much beef as you care to eat.  You can also have as many vegetables as you want, except for potatoes.

Day 7 – Cabbage soup and brown rice.  You may also have any vegetables that you want this day, except potatoes.  You may drink unsweetened fruit juice this day too.

It should be noted that you may eat as much of the cabbage soup that you want on any of the days. You must eat the cabbage soup at least 3 times per day.  It should also be pointed out that there are some other variations of this diet.

The above may not be the exact cabbage soup diet that you may have stumbled upon.  The main ingredients usually consist of the following:  cabbage, onion, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and seasonings.  The ingredients for the cabbage soup also tend to vary.

Does this diet work?

Yes and no.  The diet can work, if you actually stick to it for the 7 days.  You are severely limiting your calorie intake.  Given that you have to eat the same thing daily, will probably tend to make you want to eat less of the soup, which will even further restrict your daily calorie intake.

If you’re expecting the weight loss to be long term, don’t.  Most of the weight you lose from this diet will be water weight, not fat.  Once you resume your normal eating habits, the weight you lost will return.  In fact, it is probable that you will not only gain the weight you lost while being on this diet, but you may even gain more weight.  You could wind up heavier than before you started this diet after you resume your normal eating habits.

Is this diet safe?

No, it is not.  It is highly recommended that you don’t go on the cabbage soup diet.  This diet is not nutritionally sound.  You can actually become mal-nourished while on this diet.  You should never eat under 1200 calories, unless you’re being directed by a doctor.  This diet can make you come dangerously close to consuming less than 1200 calories.  Even though it is only a week, it is highly recommended you don’t try this diet.

The cabbage soup diet lives on because there will always be an allure and an attraction to a diet that will help you to lose weight rapidly.  The cabbage soup diet is not nutritionally sound nor will give you long term weight loss benefits at all.  There are many other safe, nutritionally sound, diets out there that will help you to lose weight quickly and easily, if you put the effort into them.

There are a number of free calorie counters available on the internet.  These programs allow you to select a specific food and it will tell you how many calories are in one serving.  It will also tell you what the recommended serving size is.  If you are on a diet, you owe it to yourself to check out the free calorie counters out there.

What should you look for in a calorie counter and how will you know when you have found a good one?  This article looks at the basic components of free calorie counters and shows you some of the sophisticated options out there.

Free calorie counters should include basic groceries.  An apple is an apple is an apple, no matter how you slice it.  Included in this category is dairy, eggs, fruit, meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetables.

But, so much of what we eat today is processed food.  So, a good program will also include various branded foods.  For instance, you should be able to find out that one serving of Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter equals 2 tablespoons and has 190 calories in it.  Additionally, you might find that 16 percent of the food comes from protein, 71 percent from fat, and 14 from carbs.  It has 2 grams of fiber.

Sophisticated free calorie counters also include sections for popular recipes.  You might learn that the popular Indian dish Chicken Tikka has 232 calories.

Additionally, many free calorie counters include the foods from popular restaurants and fast food outlets.  You might be surprised at just how many calories some of your favorite restaurant foods have in them.  And, you should take note that most of the time you will consume fewer calories if you go to a hamburger shop than a sit down restaurant.

The calorie counters depend on your ability to judge a serving.  Too many times what we judge to be enough for a meal is really multiple servings.  To help you with this, the free calorie counters divide foods into their standard suggested serving sizes and tell you what the weight in grams for that amount is.

While most programs simply list the calories in foods, some free calorie counters have a companion program that shows you just how many calories you’ve burned by doing specific activities.

Everyone knows that the way you lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume in a given period.  To lose 1 pound, you must burn 3500 extra calories than you eat.  These calories burned calculators help you determine just how much you can eat based on how much activity you have in a specific day.

Further, if you have an extra cookie at lunch, you will know how many extra minutes you have to hit on the treadmill after work with these programs.

If you are trying to lose weight, a simple search for “free calorie counters” on Google will give you a large choice. There are a lot of free calorie counters available! Take your pick!

Calorie counter charts allow the millions of people that are on a dieting plan a way to track their food intake.  Half of the people on a diet at any given time don’t know how to properly diet.  Calorie counter charts help to rectify this problem.

Many companies claim to have perfected calorie counter charts including Weight Watchers and Nutra-Slim. There are also all kinds of free calorie counter charts available on the internet if you do a basic search.

The reason that calorie counter charts are all the rage is because people are beginning to see that fad diets, miracle diets, and fat burning pills don’t work.  The basics of dieting are that you have to consume less than you burn.  In fact, to lose 1 pound, you have to burn an extra 3500 calories.

Calorie counter charts simply systematize the process of dieting.  Here are some basic tips when starting your calorie counter charts.

1. Don’t supersize your meals.  Okay, McDonald’s has technically removed the “Super Size” designation, but now they want you to “go large.”  One of the biggest advantages to calorie counter charts is that you must record just how many calories that large fry has.  Perhaps that will make you decide to choose the small size – or go without.

2. Rather than having 3 “big” meals, eat several small portions each day.  Having an egg and an orange when you wake up, an apple and a slice of cheese at 10 or 11 a.m., three ounces of tuna with a green salad at 1, a snack of yogurt at 4 and a small dinner of a steamed chicken breast and broccoli will keep you full all day with fewer calories than a more traditional food plan.  You can keep track of all of this on your chart to make sure that you don’t go over.

3. Make sure you stay on top of your calories consumed and also keep track of your calories burned.  When you record everything on your chart, you will begin to lose weight.

4. Figure out how many calories you need to maintain your weight, and drop a small amount below that.  If you normally need 1800 calories, don’t drop to 1200 just to lose weight quickly as you will slow down your metabolism.  A 1500 calorie diet would be about right.

5. You can’t eat what you don’t have on hand.  Therefore, you should never shop when you are hungry.

6. Eat slowly.  You will consume fewer calories when you take the time to enjoy your meal.  In our fast food culture, this might be hard to get used to, but your waist line will appreciate it.

7. Be gentle with yourself.  Sometimes a donut will find its way onto your calorie counter charts.  If you “cheat” with a small item once or twice a week, you may actually last longer on the diet.

When you want to lose weight, you should start by developing your own calorie counter charts.  Keep a journal of the foods you eat each day along with their calorie count.  Make sure you are accurately recording the portions you ate.  You will soon begin to fit into your skinny jeans when you keep calorie counter charts.

Chinese weight loss tea uses natural products to help you achieve the slimmer body you desire.  There are a variety of different types of Chinese weight loss tea including WuLi, Pu-Erh, and Oolong tea.

After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage on earth.  So, can tea actually help you lose weight and achieve your ideal body?

It is easy to incorporate tea into your diet.  In fact, one of the best thing about Chinese weight loss tea is that you are adding something rather than subtracting something from your diet.

The Chinese weight loss tea works by acting as a metabolic stimulant.  It helps your body to burn more calories and fats by increasing bodily functions.  Because it has only four calories a serving, you will not be gaining any weight when you drink tea of any kind.  However, when you drink Chinese weight loss tea, you take in phenols which helps to burn fat and decrease blood cholesterol levels.

Chinese tea that helps you lose weight will have up to 70 percent oxidation.  This speeds up your metabolism and activates enzymes to let you burn fat.

If you are drinking Chinese tea with the intention of loosing weight, you must drink it at least two times a day.  The rest of your diet should be healthy as well.  You should include some physical activity in your daily regime as well.

Tea must be grown in a region which receives at least 50 inches of water per year.  Tea has a growth phase and a dormant phase.  When the new tea shoots emerge as the weather begins to warm, the plant can be harvested.  All types of tea comes from the same plant and is harvested in the same way.

But it is the drying process that gives some teas their special weight loss effects.  There are some teas that are dried for up to 100 years!  (That is long term planning!)

Most of the tea plant evaporates in the drying process.  Most of the time, the drying process involves baking the tea leaves.

After the tea is dried, there may be a final process known as curing which gives tea its great flavor.

Chinese weight loss tea is oxidized for two to three days and is known as blue tea or semi-oxidized tea.  It tends to taste more like green tea than black tea.

Chinese weight loss tea is best prepared with very warm, but not boiling, water.  You can brew this tea several times from the same leaves.  The taste actually improves with each brewing.  It is common to steep the tea up to five times and the consensus is the third brewing is best.

If you want to get skinny, one of the tools at your disposal is Chinese weight loss tea.

The flat abs diet has six core principles that will help you to lose belly fat and have a sleeker body all around.  Even if you can’t get rid of your gut through endless crunches, you should see success with this flat abs diet.  That is because new research has show that what you eat may be just as important as how much you exercise.

The first important step is to eat more fiber.  You should eat at least 25 grams of fiber a day.  The reason is that bulk fiber is like a sponge which, when combined with water, moves the fat through your body more quickly.  The best high fiber foods are fruits and vegetables.  In addition to having a lot of fiber naturally, fruits and vegetables are very low in calories.  Whole grains are preferable to processed flours for the same reason.

Part of what makes natural food so good for you is the “chew” factor.  It takes longer to eat these foods, so your brain has time to get the signals that your stomach is sending that it is full.  Researchers have found that eating high fiber plant food with any meal reduces the average amount of calories by 100.

The next step is to opt for a sensible amount of high quality carbs.  The flat abs diet does not require that you dramatically limit your carbohydrates the way the Atkins or South Beach plans do.  However, if you want to lose your belly fat, you will have to control your carb intake.

Again, fruits and vegetables provide the highest quality carbs available.  They are the foods least likely to promote bloat.  Because they are composed of a lot of water, they have fewer calories and carbs for their volume.

You should have no more than 65 percent of your diet in carbs.  That means that on an 1800 calorie diet, you will have between 200 and 300 grams of carbs.  On the Adkins diet, you can have no more than 35 grams of carbs, so as you can see the flat abs diet is more generous.

Next, you want to drink lots of water – at least eight 8-ounce glasses a day. Many people think that drinking water will make them bloat when the opposite is actually true.  Water washes away the sodium in the body and thus reduces bloat.

If you are having trouble consuming that much water, try these variations:

• Drink 2 glasses of lukewarm water twice a day.  It is easier to consume lots of water in a single setting if it is not ice cold.
• If you like cold water, freeze fruit or small pieces of fruit and float it in your water.  It will keep the water cold and add a nice flavor to it.
• Use small amounts of fruit juice or other extracts such as mint to flavor the water.

Along those lines, tip number 4 on the flat abs diet is to avoid sodium wherever possible.  A woman needs 500 mg. of sodium to keep her body functioning regularly but the average American woman gets between 3000 and 6000 mg. daily.  If you eat a typical meal at a Chinese restaurant, you will get about 3000 mg. of sodium.  The body responds to this sodium intake by retaining water.  The next day, you will see the result on the scale and in the mirror.  It’s not that the Chinese food added too many calories – it’s that it has so much sodium.

The next bit of advice is to not eat too much at night.  When you put food in your body less than three hours before going to sleep, it causes you to bloat.  Plan to shut down the kitchen after a light to moderate dinner.  If you must eat, consider limiting it to a snack of 100 calories or less.  A cup of tea can often satisfy your need for food after dinner.

Finally, the last bit of advice on our flat abs diet has nothing to do with food at all.  Instead, you will want to work on reducing stress. Stress triggers the hormone cortisol which turns up your appetite and directs your body to deposit fat around your abdomen.  One way to eliminate stress (and lose weight) is to exercise.  You should also practice ways of relaxing when you get into a stressful situation.

So, there you have it.  When exercise alone isn’t working to remove your belly fat, try the flat abs diet.

More Americans are overweight than ever before; in fact, the majority of Americans are overweight or obese, despite all the billions of dollars spent every year on diet-related products. If you would rather smash the fat than smash the scale when you step on it, the Fat Smash Diet plan may be just the tool to help you on your way to a healthier, slimmer, happier you. The plan is divided into four sections, or phases, and each phase is designed to help you lose weight while adjusting your lifestyle so that you never again feel the need to try another diet.

Phase I of the Fat Smash Diet plan is only nine days long, and in this phase, you clean out your system and detoxify. Getting rid of the impurities that build up over a lifetime is a great way to begin and before you even get to the second phase, you are likely to feel better than you did just nine days earlier. You eat your veggies raw, steamed, or grilled, drink lots of water, and limit fats. The best part of phase I is that you get to eat very often – four to five times a day. There are lots of really good foods that you are allowed to eat, too. You can have milk (soy or skim), legumes, oatmeal, as many vegetables as you want, tofu, and a few other items like beans and garbanzo beans.

Phase II of the Fat Smash Diet plan comes along after nine days of the yummy foods above and the list of allowable foods increases. After the first nine days, you can add meat to your Fat Smash Diet plan.  Seafood, lean meats, whole grain cereals, and even eggs, butter, and sugar are added to the list of sensory delights that you can enjoy. You continue to prepare foods by steaming or grilling and continue to eat small meals many times per day.  Phase II ends after three weeks.

Phase III lasts for four weeks, and the preparation methods are pretty much the same.  Even more foods are now allowed, though, including pasta and bread. Who can be sad when they are eating spaghetti?

Phase IV continues with healthy food preparation and portion control. As the last phase of the Fat Smash Diet plan, this is the phase that is designed to last you the rest of your life. Smith, the diet creator, believes that all the good habits developed in the first three phases will now allow you to choose wholesome, nutritious foods and keep you in the habit of eating smaller meals more frequently.

Along with the “rules” and lists of foods that are allowed and not allowed, Smith gives you advice and tips on eating healthy.  He also understands that people will have cravings and actually deserve an occasional treat, so you are allowed to indulge a little bit every once in a while. Completely denying yourself a little indulgence from time to time is what makes diets so hard, so Smith helps you deal with that.

Smash the old ways, say good riddance to extra pounds, and enjoy life again with the Fat Smash Diet plan.

Even the most idiotic of us can lose weight and fat… if you know how! Not all diets are alike and not all diets work! People are different, every one of us is unique in our own way, and finding the right diet plan or weight loss plan can not only be difficult but confusing. There’s so many out there!

You want to lose weight, get rid of the fat that you’ve been carrying around… that extra bundle that won’t let you zip up your pants. The “love handles” and belly fat. Well, good news is YOU CAN. And you don’t have to be a genius to do it! You just need some help and the right information to guide you

Fat Loss 4 Idiots is a “hot” web-based diet plan that boasts more than 2.5 million visitors every month and continues to grow with more and more people claiming that it works better than any other diets.

One reason for it’s popularity, is that it breaks down losing weight into little chunks that you can act on right away. Just start with the first step on the first day and take it from there. It is also written in very clear language without all the scientific explanations that many times bog people down (you don’t need to be a genius!). Although it’s important to understand what is going on with our bodies, sometimes you just want simple direction to gain results and skip through all of the technical stuff which is what Fat Loss 4Idiots does very well.

As with many dieting and weight loss plans, Fat Loss 4 Idiots revolves around your metabolism. And the strategy that the program proposes is called calorie shifting. One thing that the diet tells you to do is to eat more often (four times per day and about two and a half hours apart). The strategy behind this is that it keeps your energy levels and metabolism higher. In order to figure out what kinds of foods you can eat and how often you can eat them, you use the system’s diet generator software. First you make a long list of your favorite foods from which your menu will be created. With the foods that you’ve chosen, the generator creates a personal calorie shifting menu for you. So there is no need for you to count calories, read packaging labels or buy any of the foods recommended by any diet plan. You basically stick to what you are eating already and shift your calories that way. The way that you shift your calories with this plan sort of tricks your body into burning off more calories than it would under other circumstances.

The diet does emphasize the benefits of eating right and doing exercise. It maintains that you should eat fruit and vegetables, get protein from eggs and cottage cheese, and eat carbohydrates like pasta. This flexibility also contributes to its popularity. However, the more you can stick to healthy eating and exercise, the better long-term results you will get. Also, this plan emphasizes that you can still change your weight even if your parents were overweight so you don’t have to worry about being defeated by any family genetics.

When you join Fat Loss 4 Idiots, you will receive instant access to the diet handbook as well as the online diet generator which is really the key to the whole system. While the system does advocate exercise, it doesn’t give you any workout routines or help out in that realm, so you should do a little bit of research on that yourself.

One of my exercise favorites for years, is the Leslie Sansone: Walk Away the Pounds – Complete In-Home Walking System… easy, fun, and above all, works!

It’s never too late to rethink on your diet plan and make fresh and realistic health resolutions. It is the right time to take stock of the situation. Ask yourself: Are we being fair to ourselves when we make these strict guidelines of diet and exercise? Most people recoil at the thought of dieting and exercising, especially on a cold winter morning. And for all those people who are fed up of diet dictums, the good news is that the best way to lose weight is not to diet or deprive yourself of all the good things in life. If this sounds too good to be true, wait till you try this:

Wellness – the latest buzzword to hit the health industry – is actually the best way forward. Most people who plan strict diets do it in the hope that after losing the extra kilos, they will look ravishing. But the truth is that lusterless sagging skin or loose abdominal muscles are not the result that people want. What we want is a happy, healthy, svelte figure munching an apple. But alas, that is not what we end up with very often. Therefore, after trying to lose weight for the nth time, it is now time to stop dieting forever and yet look slim.

Wellness is not only about losing weight, it is also about a positive mindset and transforming oneself into a holistically healthy person. This kind of a change in focus will not only result in weight loss but also give you great skin, good hair, a glowing persona and best of all, freedom from diets. Here is what the wellness and diet schedule entails:

• Understanding your food weaknesses and indulging in them two times a week.
• Maintaining a diet log book.
• Pick up a routine that you enjoy which is like an exercise: dancing, or walking the pet, floor exercises with music etc.
• Never deprive yourself. Always add new healthy habits to the current schedule, like having a yummy soup in the evening instead of tea and a scrumptious salad during lunch with olives, balsamic dressing and some greens and cheese cubes.
• Enjoy your meal. Many people who eat hurriedly always miss out on the flavors, do not feel satiated and end up compensating by overeating.
• And if all this does not convince you, count the number of times you have struggled through a diet program only to regain the weight with a few extra kilos.
• Looking at unhealthy habits and finding alternatives. For example, if you are prone to drinking too much of tea/coffee, substitute some for herbal teas which smell and taste good. If you eat too much of fried food, learn to make toasted snacks or baked snacks, and experiment with new roasted snacks.
• Do not starve or eat less. When we cut down on quantities, our emotional system retaliates, so the best option is to add healthy foods to the diet before cutting out on food suddenly.

Nutritionists measure the energy content of food in “calories” (sometimes capitalized and abbreviated as Cal or sometimes C, or abbreviated kcal as if small calories were being used), where each food calorie represents 4,186 joules. This is equivalent to 1000 of the calories used in chemistry, and thus the food Calorie would be called a kilocalorie if small calories were being used. However, in chemistry calories have been deprecated as a scientific unit of measure in favor of joules, and therefore in common modern usage the word “calorie” usually refers to a food calorie.

This situation provides two ways of talking about the amount of calories in food which look quite different but that express the exact same amount of energy. One may say that dietary fat has nine kilocalories (kcal) per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates have four kcal per gram, or, one may say that fat has nine Calories per gram while carbohydrates and proteins have four Calories per gram.

The amount of food energy in a particular food is measured by completely burning the food in a bomb calorimeter, a method known as direct calorimetry. Dieticians recommend counting calories to avoid obesity. The government of the United Kingdom recommends consumption of no more than 2000 Calories (2000 kcal) by women each day and 2500 Calories (2500 kcal) by men each day.

In physics or chemistry, a calorie (abbreviated cal) is a unit of energy that equals the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. This amount of heat depends somewhat on the initial temperature of the water, which results in various different units sharing the name of “calorie” but having slightly different energy values:

* the 15 °C calorie,
* the 4 °C calorie,da
* the mean 0 °C to 100 °C calorie,
* the International Steam Table calorie,
* the thermochemical calorie,

The slight variations in these units can be seen if you convert them to joules. For example, one 15 °C calorie is the amount of heat necessary to raise the temperature of 1 g of water from 14.5 °C to 15.5 °C. This is approximately equal to 4.1855 J or 3.968×10-3 Btu. The International Steam Table calorie is approximately equal to 4.1868 J and the thermochemical calorie 4.184 J.
Of these various units, what is most commonly meant by calorie in cntemporary English text is the 15 °C calorie.

The nutritional Calorie represents 1000 of these 15 °C calories. Since this could be a source of confusion and error, these units are now deprecated. The International System of Units (SI) unit for heat (and for all other forms of energy) is the joule (J), while the (obsolete) cgs (centimeter gram second system of units) system uses the erg (unit of energy and mechanical work in the centimeter-gram-second system) – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Before start losing weight and counting calories you must first calculate the number of calories your body needs everyday, because this amount changes from person to person, depending on sex, age, weight, muscle content or height. Averages are situated around 2000 calories for women and 2500 for men. An easy, but not so accurate calculation is that for every 500 less than your normal amount of calories eaten every day you will lose up to one pound (453,6g) per week.

Counting calories must be included as part of your diet, because when you loss weight is best to know how many calories your food has, and so ensuring that the amount of calories burned each day is more than the amount stored.  All nutritionists agree that a healthy low fat diet without counting calories could not exists, so take your time and solve that problem with various calorie calculators.

By knowing all the time the amount of calories consumed you can control how much you can eat and how it will affect your body. When dieting and counting the calories you can eat almost anything as long as you do not exceed the number of calories burned every day.

When you eat fewer calories, your body is forced to consume the fat stored to make up the deficit in your calorie count. Nutritionist’s advice is that you must combine psychical exercises with healthy eating in order to create some calorie deficit.

Creating a nutritionally healthy home is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the health of your child. To start, make smart food choices, and help your child develop a positive relationship with healthy food. Your children will learn their food smarts from your example.

Here are the top 10 tips for getting children to eat healthy food:

1. Do not restrict food.  Restricting food increases the risk your child may develop eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia later in life. It can also have a negative effect on growth and development.   Also by restricting food you will actually increase the risk of overeating later in the day which will cause weight gain.

2. Keep healthy food on hand.  Children will eat what’s readily available. Keep fruit in a bowl on the counter, not buried in the crisper section of your fridge.  Remember, your child can only choose foods that you stock in the house, by limiting ‘junk food’ you will, by default, teach your child how to choose healthier foods.

3. Don’t label foods as “good” or “bad.” Instead, tie foods to the things your child cares about, such as sports, academics and hobbies. Let your child know that lean protein such as turkey and calcium in dairy products give strength to their sports and academic performance, the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables add luster to skin and hair and the carbs in whole grains will give them energy to play.

4. Praise healthy choices. Give your children a proud smile and tell them how smart they are when they choose healthy foods. Kids thrive on positive reinforcement!

5. Don’t nag about unhealthy choices. If your child chooses unhealthy foods infrequently, ignore it. However, if your child always wants fatty, fried food, redirect the choice. You might try roasting potato sticks in the oven (tossed in just a bit of oil) instead of buying french fries. Or, if your child wants candy, you might make fresh strawberries dipped in a little chocolate sauce. Too busy? Then keep naturally sweet dried fruit at home for quick snacks.  With consistent effort taste buds change and soon your child will be craving healthy foods.

6. Never use food as a reward. This could create weight problems in later life. Instead, reward your children with something physical and fun — perhaps a trip to the park or a quick game of catch.

7. Sit down to family dinners at night. If this isn’t a tradition in your home, it should be. Research shows that children who eat dinners at the table with their parents have better nutrition and are less likely to get in serious trouble as teenagers. Start with one night a week, and then work up to three or four, to gradually build the habit.

8. Prepare plates in the kitchen. There you can put healthy portions of each item on everyone’s dinner plate. Your children will learn to recognize correct portion sizes.  Too often people go for seconds and even thirds just because the food is right there.  You might notice that you need less food to feel full!

9. Give the kids some control. Ask your children to take three bites of all the foods on their plate and give it a grade, such as A, B, C, D, or F. When healthy foods – especially certain vegetables — get high marks, serve them more often. Offer the items your children don’t like less frequently. This lets your children participate in decision making. After all, dining is a family affair!

10. Consult your pediatrician. Always talk with your child’s doctor before putting your child on a diet, trying to help your child gain weight, or making any significant changes in the type of foods your child eats. Never diagnose your child as too heavy, or too thin, by yourself.  If weight change is recommended seek the help of a Dietitian.