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How to Plan a Healthy Menu

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We know that failing to plan is planning to fail, so we know the importance of simple menu planning can make the day a little more timely and efficient as well as setting you up for success as far as sticking to your healthy eating plan.

While simply taking the steps to start planning is the first thing to think about, there are a few tips we can share to keep up variety and lessen boredom with your menu.

Choose dishes and recipes that you know you will enjoy at the time you're eating them (this goes for lunch foods too and foods where you can prepare extra the night before and pack some for lunch the next day). Simply choosing foods you like will help you get excited about the planning and in turn the preparation of the foods.

Make sure you think ahead to plan for the times when you know you have plenty of time to prepare a meal and other times when your time is limited. It makes sense to plan a meal that does not require a lot of preparation at a time when you do not have a lot of time to prepare the meal. This does not mean you have to eat toast when your time is limited, it just means that you might pick a recipe that is prepared in 30 mins rather than an hour. (This can also be assisted by ensuring you have all the ingredients you need ahead of time so you can start preparing the meal straight away).

Ensure you pick a different base each day so that you increase your variety. An example of this would be to choose a different meat for consecutive days. You might have a beef dish on Monday so it is best to choose another meat or vegetarian protein source on Tuesday for example chicken or tofu.

As mentioned above, ensuring the dish is not the same type will ensure you do not get bored either. For example, having a curry each night (even if one night is chicken the next is fish and the next is pork) you will probably not be impressed by the third or forth night of curry, even if curry is your favorite food.

Think about a great place to find good recipes. There are so many great recipe books available and so many generally sit on our books without being opened. This is a great opportunity to dust off those cookbooks and try out some recipes you've not tried before. Even the least healthy of recipes can be modified slowly to decrease the fat content or increase the fiber content.

Scatter some of you old tried and tested recipes among the new recipes to provide some familiarity to your menu but also some new recipes to expand your repertoire.

Try some things you've never tried before, you never know what might become your new favorite food. Our supermarket ranges seem to be getting larger and the opportunity to shop online for ingredients makes it even easier to get hold of a specific food item or ingredient that you may never have tried before.

Try some foods from different cuisines, there are plenty of great opportunities to learn how to plan a healthy menu for particular cuisines. And there are plenty of recipes, online tips and cooking classes you can take to help with expanding your knowledge and experiences with difference cuisines.

One of the most satisfying things about how to plan a healthy menu is the opportunity to sit down and create the menu which will then whet your appetite for more exciting items on your menu and then make your shopping trip more interesting in your discovery of all the great items you can experiment with.

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Source by Joanne Mirtschin

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How to Use Laxatives to Lose Weight

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There is a lot of misinformation out on the internet these days about using laxatives to lose weight. Unfortunately for some young people, the use of laxatives has become the latest trend in extreme dieting techniques designed to help people lose weight quickly without having to do the hard work of proper diet and exercise. But do laxatives work as a weight loss technique, and is it a good idea to try it? What are the facts?

What is a Laxative?

Laxatives are drugs which stimulate the bowels, causing them to empty themselves quickly. They are designed to be used when a person is constipated, meaning they are not able to have a normal bowel movement for a few days. The first danger in using laxatives to lose weight is that, if you are not constipated, you are putting a drug into your digestive tract that will not encounter any blockage, and this can have an extreme effect other than what it was designed to do.

Using laxatives to lose weight comes with risks and potential side effects. Users can have pain in their digestive tract, and over the long term they can actually suffer from constipation, even if they did not have this problem before. Laxatives can be habit-forming, and users who take them often will soon discover that they need to take more and more to have the same effect.

Are Laxatives a Good Weight Loss Technique?

It's not a good idea to use laxatives to lose weight, mainly because they simply do not work very well for this purpose. If you have food in your small intestine, your body will absorb most of the calories from the food before the laxative will take effect.

Apart from the ineffectiveness, there are some other real long-term dangers of using laxatives to lose weight. Overall, it is not a good idea, and the use of these drugs should not be considered a substitution for healthy eating habits. You may find some irresponsible people on the internet saying to use them, but you will not find any reliable health professionals giving that advice.

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Source by Courtney Knowles

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Are You Thinking About Using Weight Loss Drugs?

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Weight loss drugs are those with the limitations! They offer poor solutions to an overwhelming societal health problem. Weight loss drugs are not cheap, they can interact with other regular and prescription medications and no studies have yet been conducted on the effects of long-term use. For these and other reasons, this is a decision best made with the counsel of your physician. Weight loss drugs are generally anorexiants. FDA regulated diet drugs have been evaluated and approved for weight loss as part of an exercise and behavioral modification plan.

Prescription weight loss drugs are used to treat obesity, while over-the-counter supplements are generally used for cosmetic weight loss. Non-prescription weight loss supplements include herbal weight loss pills, fat-burning pills, and many other diet and sports supplements. Prescription weight loss drugs have a history of being successful. They are not a cure all, but they are far more reliable than some green pill that features dandelion extracts and guarantees to have worked for centers in some part of the world where dandelions do not even grow. Prescription weight loss drugs are intended for individuals with medically significant weight problems, and are intended to be used in conjunction with dietary, behavioral, and exercise programs. If used correctly by the intended group of users, oftentimes they can be a lifesaver.

Prescription weight loss drugs cash on delivery are available without too much fuss. But as a reminder, health forms need to be filled out as honestly as possible.

Medication enable doctors to lose only about 10 percent of their weight, Frank says. Patients tell him the drugs have stopped working. Medicines sold on the net are most vulnerable of all. It is always better to consult a doctor regarding the medicine before one plans to take to start its course.

Studies have shown that health promotion messages are most effective when specifically targeted to the patient's level of readiness. For patients who are not ready to lose weight at this time, the goal should focus on strategies to avoid further weight gain through healthy eating and more physical activity.

Debatably, any drug that stops appetites raises a high death risk and may be inappropriate for clinical use.

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Source by Greg Wadel