Month: June 2017

Almost everyone wants to lose some weight, but most of us don’t know where to begin. Many of us have tried fad diets or exercising more, but we just can’t seem to shed those pounds. Here are some tips from nutritionists that could help you lose weight.

1) Don’t just focus on carbs.

Many people try low-carb diets and experience quick success, so they try to stick with it permanently. Those diets are generally not sustainable. Although it’s good to limit your carbs, that’s not the only thing you should be focused on.

You want to make sure that your diet leads to a caloric deficit. If you’re cutting out carbs but eating a bunch of nuts or oils, you may actually gain weight because of the additional calories. Focus on overall calories, not just carbohydrates.

2) Try not to weigh yourself.

There’s nothing more frustrating than dieting and exercising for a month or two only to get on the scale and see you haven’t lost much weight. This is incredibly discouraging and leads to many people just giving up.

That’s a shame, because weight fluctuations can be caused by water intake, the time of the day you weigh yourself, and many other factors not related to calories.
Instead of weighing yourself, focus on how your pants fit and how you look. If you’re dieting and exercising, you should look (and feel) better, and your pants should be looser. That will show you that what you’re doing is working,

3) Enjoy the food you’re eating.

Some people think that eating right means depriving yourself of the foods you love. That’s not the case at all. In fact, you have to treat yourself from time to time in order to stick with the diet.

Allow yourself to cheat once in awhile, just make sure it doesn’t become a regular thing. The key to a healthy diet is moderation, not deprivation.

4) Ice water helps you burn calories.

We all know that it’s important to drink water throughout the day, but drinking the right type of water can help you burn extra calories. In fact, you can burn an extra 100 calories a day by drinking ice water.

When you drink ice cold water, your body burns extra energy to maintain your core temperature. Three 24-ounce servings of ice water is the magic number to drink to burn those 100 calories.

5) Losing weight requires a real change in lifestyle.

We’ve all been sucked in by fad diets that promise immediate results. These diets are good if you need to lose weight quickly for a big event or just want to boost your motivation. The problem is, some people get the wrong impression and think that keeping the weight off will be just as easy. It’s not.

To really stay fit and healthy, you’ll have to change your whole lifestyle. That means eating right every day, getting enough exercise throughout the week, and avoiding the unhealthy eating that can pack on pounds. It’s not necessarily “easy” to do, but the rewards are completely worth it.

For years, both men and women have been clamoring for a male birth control pill. Women find it unfair that they are responsible for taking the pill or getting an IUD to prevent pregnancy.

Men, too, want the ability to control their sperm count without relying on condoms. Scientists have recently developed a shot for men that they say is as effective as the pill for women, but it comes with certain side effects that some men think makes it ultimately not worth it.
Many have wondered why a birth control pill for men has never been created, with some speculating that it’s due to society’s gender bias that says women are ultimately responsible for babies. Although attitude plays a part in it, a bigger reason is that it’s easier to prevent the insemination of a single egg than to try to control millions of sperm.

It’s also because men have long had the option of a vasectomy. A vasectomy cuts the vas deferens, preventing the release of sperm. This is an almost completely effective way to prevent pregnancy and is reversible in most cases, but many men don’t want to go under the knife. With this new shot, they won’t have to have surgery to prevent pregnancy.
A recent study followed 266 men who received this shot and tracked their sexual habits. Of these men, only four became fathers in the 56 weeks tracked by the studies, giving it a 95 percent success rate. Although this was encouraging, the men did report some complications.

The shot works by affecting the hormone levels in men, which can lead to some pretty unpleasant side effects in the participants. The research actually had to be stopped early because the men were reporting severe mood swings and depression related to the shots. Other minor side effects reported included acne, injection site pain, and increased libido.
Doctors are convinced that they can tweak the shot to make these side effects less problematic, but there may not be enough money available from pharmaceutical companies to take this shot to market. That’s because of the gender bias mentioned above; these companies are not convinced that men will actually pay for this shot, no matter how effective it may be.

Many women, however, are unsympathetic to the concerns of these men. That’s because women already deal with these side effects from birth control and have for decades. To them, it seems a bit hypocritical that men are willing or unable to tolerate the side effects and instead pass the burden of preventing an unwanted pregnancy to the woman.
For their part, many young men are stepping up to say they would gladly get this shot and would tolerate the side effects. It’s less invasive than a vasectomy and more effective than condoms. Plus it would give men the ability to control if and when they get a woman pregnant.

If enough men step up and tell pharmaceutical companies that there’s a profit to be made from this shot, it’s likely that research will continue. If they don’t, it’s likely that research will end.