HEALTH TIPS

Smallest bag of cheetos is 170 calories… that is one ounce! A 99 cent bag of cheetos is 3.5 servings which is 595 calories. This is more than a Big Mac!! A bag contains about 4 tablespoons of lard and if you are feeding it to your children as a daily snack is extra calories from their basic metabolic calorie needs, will allow them to gain up to 6 pounds per month. By starting to understand these simple facts, you can help yourself and your family lose weight and stay healthy.

Are you swinging by Starbucks for your morning mocha? The calories in your coffee can really add up. If you order a grande mocha with whip cream this is about 400 calories. If you do this every day for a month and these calories are in excess of your daily needs, you gain 3-4 pounds. Over the year you can gain 40 pounds just by having your morning "coffee." Consider ordering your coffee drink with nonfat milk. This will save you about 50-100 calories depending on the size of the drink. Also consider a sugar free syrup like vanilla if you like a sweet drink. A sugar free vanilla latte made with nonfat milk is 120 calories for a grande (16 oz). This could cut your calories by almost 300 per day (enough to start losing 3 pounds per month!)

A can of regular soda is 150 calories! A teaspoon of sugar is about 10 calories… so if we do the math… every can of soda has 13 to 15 teaspoons of sugar. If you drink two sodas a day, that is 300 more calories than you need and enough to gain 3 pounds at the end of the month. By having two cans of soda per day over the entire year, you can gain 36 pounds of fat just from drinking 2 cans of soda per day.

Did you eat breakfast today? Studies show that people who eat breakfast lose 20% more weight than those that miss breakfast. Breakfast is 'breaking a fast' of not eating from before sleep to the morning. This meal wakes up your body metabolically and sets your body on a calorie burning path for the rest of the day. By missing breakfast you are continuing your overnight fast. By doing so your body is in conservation mode and trying to hold on to all of your fat stores. By waking up your metabolism you can start you body burning calories and fat and helping with your weight loss.

If you think counting calories or measuring servings is just too hard consider this: Do you know how much you paid for your shoes? How about your purse? And what about your shirt and eye glasses. Now add this all up. Was it simple? The same can be done for your calories. You may not know now how many calories in an apple or a piece of bread or a chicken breast but after looking at the prices (calorie content) just one time you will start to have an idea. Just as you check the price before you buy your clothes, check the calories of what you are choosing to eat to see if you can "afford" it.