Obesity is caused not only by the foods we eat but also the way we cook them! Yep, if you can cook foods intelligently, you would be able to keep your weight under control. If you thought that you need to be a smart chef to learn how to cook healthily, you are dead wrong! In this article I will offer you five piece of cake cooking tips which would get you up and running in no time!

1. You use stuffing for turkey, right, and probably you cook them along with the turkey! Okay, let me tell you an effective way to do the same thing but in a healthier way! When you cook your stuffing along with turkey, the whole food becomes very rich in calories. However, if you cook the stuffing separately, then you would be able to cut down on a lot of unnecessary calories!

2. Gravy is surely a vital part of meat. In fact I refuse to eat either chicken or turkey if I am not served sufficient gravy with it! But if you pass the gravy through a skimmer before serving it, your gravy would have fewer calories than otherwise!

3. Pecan pies might be tasty but it is not recommended for someone who is looking forward to losing some pounds during the holiday season, or rather keep their weight under control. Instead of pecan pies, why not try apple pies which are no less delicious and at the same time won’t make you fat! If you hate the taste of apple pies, you can always top them with low-fat or fat-free yogurt!

4. I make sure to keep track not only my own food intake but also that of my friends. Whenever they come to my house for snacking, I serve them pretzels and snacks which are low on fat. I prevent from serving chips and doodles as they are high on calories! Whenever I host a party, I make sure to have fresh fruits and vegetables available for party guests at all times!

As a matter of fact, most people hate eating raw vegetables, so I steam them and use lemon juice as well as several kinds of flavored herbs as toping before serving them! This much I can guarantee that if you ever attend any of my parties, you won’t gain any extra weight!

5. Sugar candies and sugary candied yams must be kept away, especially if you don’t want to end up with a huge fat belly at the end of the holiday season! I have found that potatoes, when eaten either in baked or roasted form, offer a much better and healthier option than those candies!

Bear in mind that it is a lot easier to put on extra weight than lose it. A little discretion on your part would ensure that you never put any unnecessary weight on yourself and always stay fit!

There is hardly anyone who doesn’t take one resolution or other during the New Year, and one of the most popular New Year resolutions is the weight loss resolution. Every New Year, millions of people resolve to shed the extra flab and get slimmer, and just a few weeks after that, most of them break their resolutions and get back to their normal (read unhealthy) lifestyle! The result: nada, zilch!

This year too would be no different either. Many would take the same resolution they have probably taken countless number of times before, and once again only a handful people would make it to the slim figure! But why should you follow their trail? In this article I am going to tell you about some of the tools and strategies I used to lose weight quickly and successfully!

Yeah, I too had taken countless weight loss but they came to nothing until I started doing the following things!

1. I cleaned up my kitchen and refrigerator: No, I didn’t make them completely empty; rather, I cleared all the junk foods out of them! When the culprits aren’t around the corner, there would be less of a temptation to eat them. Think about it: when are you more likely to eat gobs of ice cream: when it is not at your home and would need to be fetched from a store which is a couple of miles away, or when it is conveniently seated in your refrigerator?

When you would have to make a great effort to indulge in your junk food cravings, you tend to eat them less and more likely to opt for healthy foods which should already be stocked in your home!

Oh, I totally forgot to tell you: once you clean your kitchen of all the junk and fatty foods, buy lots of natural fruits and eatables and stock them in your kitchen and refrigerator! I have found that this has helped me a lot in killing my junk food cravings!

2. I started keeping a weight loss journal: To make sure that I was really doing things which were conducive to my weight loss goal, I started keeping a journal in order to monitor my daily lifestyle. These days, most weight loss programs automatically offer you a journal for free where you could record all the detailed statistics about yourself, including but not limited to what foods you are eating and what not, what workouts you are doing and how far they have helped you lose weight, whether you are eating something you shouldn’t, etc., and many other such tidbits.

You can also use it to keep track on your body weight, so that you know how far you have progressed and how many more pounds are left to get rid! Some people prefer to maintain separate weight loss journals, each for food, exercise, etc., which is fine as well.

The reason behind maintaining a weight loss journal is that it would act as your moral police by keeping you on the right track, and at the same time would act as your guardian which would lead you towards the path of weight loss success!

Over the past few years, a number of diet plans have sprung up promising ‘quick weight loss’. One would think that with so many diet plans out there, there is no excuse for not losing weight. Unfortunately however, most of these diets are fad diets. They promise you quick weight loss and make you lose weight too fast by unnatural and unhealthy means. However, as soon as you quit dieting and start eating normally, you gain back all that weight as quickly as you ‘lost’ it!

One such fad diet is the detox diet. Like other fad diets, the detox diet also promotes itself with a lot of empty promises. A detox diet claims to cleanse all the toxins and wastes from your body which have accumulated there thanks to your unhealthy eating habits over the years. There is no doubt that once you cleanse your body, you will lose at least five to ten pounds, but that won’t be FAT loss. Still I would have recommended it to you if not for the unhealthy weight loss ways it follows.

A detox diet often recommends fasting in some or other forms. There are different types of detox diets out there. Some would recommend you total fasting while with others you are required to survive only on fruit juices, cabbage soups, maple syrup or even lemon juice! There are also detox diets which suggest you to survive only on one specific vegetable or fruit.

Call it detox dieting, or body cleansing, or fasting, but the fact remains that starving in any shape or form is dangerous for your health. Fasting for a short period of time maybe good for cleansing your body but prolonged fasting can have damaging effects on your body, such as dehydration, nausea, fatigue, low blood sugar level, etc!

The detox diet is a fad diet by all the angles: it makes empty promises, forces you to survive on a particular type of fruit or juice makes you lose a few pounds fast, and then the pounds roll back pretty fast! In short, these diets are not only unhealthy but ineffective as well!

As a matter of fact, if your kidneys, lymph system and liver are healthy and stable and if your hormone levels are normal, then you really don’t need to follow any detox diet in order to detoxify your body. Your body will automatically detoxify itself of all the toxins and wastes! As such, detox diets are total waste of time and effort.

The question then remains: how is it possible to lose weight easily and rapidly! Well, I can tell you about a weight loss technique which is simple and easy but NOT quick. Exercising regularly and eating a healthy, balanced meal will help you lose weight for sure, but requires patience on your part.

If you are serious about weight loss, you only need to follow this natural weight loss method! Stop wasting your money and time on fad diets and worthless exercise machines; they are just designed to rob you of your hard-earned money!

If you thought there is no simple way to lose weight, you are dead wrong! What if I tell you about three weight loss methods that are both easy and natural? No, I am not going to ask you to diet, since I know that dieting doesn’t work for long! In this article I will tell you about weight loss methods which are better than dieting!

1. Eat breakfast: When you wake up early in the morning, your body usually runs low on fuel because you probably had your last meal nine or ten hours ago! Obviously, you need to supply fuel to your body in the form of food.

This is the reason why breakfast is the most important feast of the day. Normally, you are perhaps used to having a small breakfast, medium lunch and a large dinner. If you eat this way you will NEVER lose weight.

In order to lose weight, you need to do just the opposite: have a large breakfast; in fact, your breakfast should be the largest meal of the day, and dinner would be the smallest one! Just think about it, if you have a large dinner, you are likely to go to bed soon after that. Generally, your body won’t be able to utilize all the extra calories and would instead store them as fat deposits.

In contrast, if you have your largest meal at breakfast, your body will get an entire day to break down the food and burn off all the calories successfully. Due to this, you won’t put on weight!

2. Stay away from sugar: Sugar is the one thing that would make you gain weight pretty fast. Our body is able to convert sugar into fat very fast. You will probably get an instant burst of energy if you eat too many sugary foods, but that energy would only be short-lived, followed by unbearable pangs of hunger.

Then the obvious would happen: you probably would eat more and more sugary foods and gain more and more fat. I would suggest that you replace sugary foods with their healthier alternatives such as lean chicken meat, natural fruits and vegetables, bread, pasta, etc.

3. Drink water: If you don’t drink lots of water, then forget about weight loss! Water is a natural drink that doesn’t make you fatter; instead, it helps you burn fat by boosting your metabolic rate! If you have ever woken up in the morning feeling tired and fatigued, it is likely that you are suffering from dehydration.

Remember that your body requires water in order to perform even minor tasks; if you don’t supply it with enough water, it will tend to store water instead of flushing it out. The result would be that you would gain some more pounds!