My question was: if antioxidants are so good, does it mean that oxygen is not such a good guy after all? Let’s try to clear this misunderstanding in a few words. The process of oxidation of cells is a chemical reaction that takes place in our body millions of times in millions of cells: its purpose is to produce energy. The waste products of this oxidation process are the so-called free radicals. From a biochemical standpoint the free radicals are instable molecules, because the only have one electron. During the cellular metabolism, the free radicals are transformed into hydrogen peroxide, which is not something you want in your body. Antioxidants can stop this last transformation of the free radicals by providing them with the missing electron.
Our body actually endogenously produces antioxidants as a mechanism of self defense against this action of the free radicals, but the quantity is limited and an extra help from the outside is generally necessary. However, before thinking of an antioxidant supplement, the main resource should be an antioxidant diet. A balanced diet should be enough to provide all the antioxidants foods our body needs. Antioxidant supplements are for those who have an unbalanced diet or lead a sedentary lifestyle.
In nature there are many antioxidant foods. The most important are vegetable pigments (Polyphenols, bioflavonoids), vitamins (C, E, beta-carotene), and micronutrients (like selenium, zinc, copper, glutathione, coenzyme Q10).
Polyphenols have anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties and are an effective protection against cancer and various heart diseases. They can be found in colored vegetables and in their by-products: cabbage, carrot, pumpkin, spinach, peppers, lettuce etc.
The foods with high content of bioflavonoids are antioxidant fruits like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, prunes, apricots, melons, apples, oranges, red grapes. Blueberries also contain anthocyanins, which are a very effective protection for the capillaries and the retina. Red grapes are also rich in resveratrol (see my post about how to lose weight now with the red grape diet),  a powerful defense against cholesterol. Flavonoids can also be found in tea leaves.
Vitamin C: contained mostly in citrus fruits, it’s not stored by the body, it’s therefore very important to make sure the daily intake is constant.
Vitamin E: it was popular in the past for its alleged anti-hysterias properties, it is an effective protection for the cell membranes and the red blood cells.
Another powerful antioxidant is Melatonin, which is cyclically praised or denigrated. An integration of melatonin can be a great help against insomnia and jet-lag effects, and also against anxiety and depression.
It is important to note that each antioxidant is only effective against one or two free radicals; therefore a balanced diet is crucial for an effective antioxidant therapy.
New antioxidant products are launched everyday, and it’s a still partly unexplored world, but we can safely say that, other than the one and only legitimate cause of free radicals: energy production, there are other external causes of oxidation: smoking, stress, solar radiations, chronic fatigue. Even before entering a pharmacy, we could and should change our habits, following these 10 simple rules:
1. Sleeping enough
2. Eating a proper quantity and quality of food
3. Drinking alcohol in moderation
4. Losing weight in excess
5. Avoiding, when possible, a hectic life
6. Exercising, moderately but constantly
7. Giving up smoking
8. Avoiding, especially during summer direct exposure to sunlight
9. Turning off the TV and reading a book instead
10. Starting a hobby, making sure it doesn’t become a new stress generator

Tip number 1. Visualize your moment of glory. We all have kept in our memory, at least one moment of glory, when we felt at our best and we really liked ourselves. Each morning, when you wake up, bring your mind back to that moment (or moments) and try to taste again the sense of fulfillment and strength that it gives you. Bring it back again during the day, especially when you are about to have lunch or dinner. You will realize it will be easier not to exaggerate with food and lose weight quick.

Tip number 2. Just do it. Analyzing and understanding stuff is great, but it won’t make you lose weight. Whatever you understood, do it now. You feel you are more determined? Then stop asking for advice. Can you be less hard with yourself? Then allow yourself to make mistakes. Once you know you can do these small things to change your life, you will also get enough courage and strength to change your shape and begin your path to weight loss.

Tip number 3. What are you afraid of, really? Even if people see us as self confident people, at ease in difficult situations, if we are overweight, it’s likely that we use food to bury our fears. So ask yourself: what am REALLY afraid of? To remain alone? Not to be good enough? To get ill? Confess your fear, at least with yourself, then you will be calm enough to face it, without using food.

Tip number 4. Give yourself something to remember everyday. If you happen to live ordinary days everyday, be aware that boredom is one of the main risk factors for people who tend to eat too much and with no regularity.  Make sure that everyday has something worth remembering, a walk in the park, a phone call to an friend, a hot bath. Just to remember that you are not an ordinary person with days in black and white. Losing weight will be less stressful.

Tip number 5. Give yourself credit. Being overweight is a trick that our body does to make us feel its presence when we live as “invisible.” Being humble is a good quality, but never taking credit for what we do is not. Give yourself credit, put your signature in what you do. The more visible you are, the less need you will have to gain weight.

Tip number 6. Self-discipline is better than a diet. You repeat to yourself that, when you want it, it will be easy to lose those pounds, or to stop smoking, or start doing exercise again. But can you walk the walk? Stop  living in the virtual dimension, bring back your will, force yourself to do or not to do something everyday, like not drinking coffee for a day, or doing 10 push-ups for a week, or to finally call the cable TV company to downgrade your package. With food it works the same way.

Tip number 7. Self-assurance is not always mandatory. Eating is also a matter of safety: if we eat we live. So, eating less is more difficult if you want to be safe all the time. Rely more on your instinct. What’s the worst that can happen?

These fast weight loss tips proved very useful to me over the years, I’m sure they will help you too.

Grapes is a type of fruit with a very long tradition. It was originally grown in the Mar Caspio area, and brought to Europe by the Romans. Ancient people believed grapes had religious and therapeutic qualities.

They were not wrong at all, as grapes is the first you should get hold of if you want to lose weight right now. The list of reasons is impressive. Grapes are: thirst-quenching, energy-giving, purifying, laxative, they help regularize blood pressure, and the fat burning metabolism. All these things together work very effectively if you need to lose weight now. I tried it once and it was REALLY effective, and did me a great good, however, it’s not a diet for everyone, so don’t feel guilty if after reading this article you will think it’s not for you.

How and for how long should you eat grapes to lose weight? Typically, the fast weight loss grape  diet lasts three weeks. You start with 250g (½ lb) a day and gradually substitute your daily food by adding the same quantity of grapes each day, until you reach 3kg (about 6½lb) – yes, it’s correct. This should take about 12 days. Once you reach the 3kg per day keep it like that for about one week.  At the end of this treatment, all the effects of grapes for a quick weight loss will be multiplied by 100. There is one counter-indication though: people with diabetes or hyperglycemia should NOT try this diet, as grapes contain a high quantity of simple sugars.

Does it sound daunting? No worries, if you want to lose weight now, you don’t have to go hardcore. The grape diet is also quite effective even when it’s followed for 1 or 2 days, for example during the weekend.You can plan 3-4 weekends in a month where you will only eat grapes.

If you decide to try this fast weight loss diet, you’ll end up eating in one month the quantity of grapes a normal person eats in one year, so be prepared to spend a little more, but buy certified organic grapes, without pesticides.

To make this lose weight fast now diet even more effective, two important things to remember:

• eat the whole grape, including the skin and the seeds. Grape seeds are rich in polyunsaturated fat and polyphenols, antioxidant substances that protect the skin from free radicals, with an effective anti-aging effect. The skin on the other hand is very rich in resveratrol, which also has a very strong antioxidant effect and stimulated cells reproduction.
• red grapes have higher quantities of resveratrol, so they should be chosen over white grapes.

So, give it a try and let me know, if you want to lose weight now, and IF you think you can do it without too much stress,  the grape fruit diet is the way to go.

Failing a diet does not mean we will never lose weight. It may sound obvious, but I bet that this is the first thought that many people have when they gradually find out that their efforts are not paying off. The failure of a diet (and by diet I do not mean one of those DYI diets that you find in women’s magazines), on the contrary, is a great chance to analyze what mistakes were made and do it better the next time.
Sometimes a weight loss diet fails because it’s not the right one for that particular individual. Yet, more often than not, fast weight loss diets fail because of lack of confidence, and plenty of fear of not succeeding and of making mistakes. But making mistakes does not mean failing. The cause of this fear is probably in a perfectionist and result-oriented culture where lack of success brings negative judgments with it.
Mistakes are not a sign of lack of skill, will nor strength. They are rather a sign of lack of knowledge of ourselves and the world. Mistakes are a chance to gain knowledge, so the best attitude when we fail a diet, is to ask ourselves what the lesson learnt is, rather than punishing ourselves.
A diet is not an exam, it is an experience, which is a word (I bet you never noticed, I hadn’t noticed myself until a few weeks ago), that shares the same root with experiment. Think of a lab experiment, it is a trial and error thing, the researcher already knows there will be failures, it is just part of the game. A fast weight loss diet plan (and indeed any experience we go through in our life) should be like this: open to mistakes and corrections.
Here’s a list of reasons why a weight loss diet plan that goes wrong may be seen as a personal failure:
Too much focus on results. Our fast weight loss diets become an exam because we introduce the concept of failure. What we really care about is losing weight, in other words, we only look at what is happening outside our body, whereas the inside remains completely neglected. But a good looking exterior, and an unhappy spirit are not a good combination at all, as it is either not possible (lack of satisfaction usually generated fat), or doable but unhealthy.
Too accurate expectations: we want to lose 7 KG, not one more, not one less. The problem is, our body may not agree with that. We need to give it some time and be flexible, if we want to carry on a healthy fast weight loss diet
Too fast in judging ourselves: you finally gave up and had that cheeseburger. Instead of asking ourselves “why?” we become aggressively judgmental: what should we expect? After all we lack of will power. The only thing that can happen is gaining weight…
Easy generalizations: if a diet fails, any diet will fail. There’s simply no weight loss plan that works for us, so we’ll never ever lose weight.
All this is NOT true: what if this is not the right moment? The first try is almost never a success, there is really no secret here, only learning from our mistakes.

When someone wants to lose weight quickly without putting the necessary effort, or with DIY diets found in magazines, it’s easy to spot the flaws. But what if someone is doing whatever they are told to by a dietitian and still don’t lose weight?
I had dinner at a friend’s house last week, and met her cousin, a very lovely person. Sometimes I think I have a kind of “weight loss magnet,” one way or the other I always end up talking to someone who has or had weight loss problems. This very nice lady in her forties, has been trying to lose weight for 2 years. With the help of a dietitian she’s following a 1200 calorie diet. A friend of hers is with the same dietitian with basically the same diet and is having great results.
She’s very strict, she says, and I believe her: of all the delicious food our host prepared for us, she stuck to salads and chicken with very little bread and one scoop of strawberry ice cream as dessert.
Nonetheless, she confessed that she was starting to feel frustrated, because after an initial fast weight loss, she stopped losing weight, and now she is still with 13 pounds to go. With all the effort she’s putting into it, she thinks she deserves to lose weight quick, and I cannot but agree with her.
I hope she didn’t take it bad, but I suggested her to change dietitian, and for an obvious reason: the diet she’s following is working for her friend but not for her. And the dietitian should be wise enough to see that and do some changes. There cannot be one diet for everyone, I understand that dietitians are not fortune-tellers, but the fact that a weight loss diet is not causing any weight loss, should be a clear sign that it’s time to move on. The second piece of advice I gave to her was to choose her own doctor. Sure, she should ask around, but in the end she should choose for herself. Going to someone else’s doctor is fine when it works, but sticking to it in spite of the clear lack of success, is a subtle way to give up taking responsibility for ourselves.
The magic word in these cases (and she actually named it a couple of times) is “metabolism”. How many times have we blamed it? Me, countless times: I’m not losing weight because I have a low metabolism, or high, or whatever. Sure metabolism exists, but it is often treated as a scapegoat, the cause of all wrongs and frustrations.

My idea about metabolism is now very clear: let’s forget about it. Whatever improves the metabolism can only be a consequence of the two basic rules of a correct lifestyle: eating healthy and in moderation (not too much but not too little), and movement.
Also, for a quick weight loss, the psychological factor is important. I don’t know how “scientific” this is (as I say in my disclaimer, I’m no doctor nor a psychologist), but it proved true for me: frustration is an “emotional toxin” that will keep your metabolism lower no matter what you do.
The energy given by food can be used in a positive way, generating creative energy and joy, or in a negative way, generating stress and depression. But it can also remain completely unused and stagnate, and that’s when it generates fat. There is a number for that: 7000 calories of unused food energy will make you one kg (2.2 lb) fatter.
What I’m trying to say is, if you want to burn calories, and know how to lose weight quickly, you have to move, do stuff. Going to the gym, or jogging is the most popular way to do that, but as a matter of fact, any kind of activity will make you burn calories: going shopping, a stroll in the park, a visit to a museum, playing with your kids, you know, this kind of things. More in general, and this is the most important point, doing these things with a pinch of fantasy, sense of humor and passion, will make your metabolism up to 15-20% faster. There is a word for that: eustress, or positive stress, as opposed to distress, or negative stress.
When you “turn off the lights” and do things only because you have to not because you want to, you are putting your metabolic counter to sleep, accumulating fat. Starting a strict diet may help, but not always. Like in my friend’s cousin’s case, an unhappy diet can set off a vicious circle that increases distress and nervous hunger, leading to weight gain. On the other hand, taking care of ourselves will have the opposite effect: it will set in motion a higher metabolic level, it will make us want to do more exercise, and eat less, as we will find satisfaction in things other than food. With these three things together, a quick weight loss will be the most natural outcome.

six rules for an effective weight loss

How many effective weight loss programs have you come across before? In my experience, not many. Here are my six rules for an effective weight loss.

1. Lose no more than eight ounces of fat per week. Your body will always try to hold on to its fat and will react to any attempt at losing fat too quickly by slowing down metabolism, increasing fat-storage and appetite. Lowering fat levels little by little allows the body to adjust to small changes without negative reactions.

2. Get bodyfat levels measured every two to three months to ensure you re losing fat and not valuable muscle. Regular weight-training will help maintain muscle strength. This is the magic rule that converts an effective weight loss program into a most effective weight loss program

3. Avoid saturated fats. Too much carbohydrates or protein actually promote glycogen stores in the muscles and increase the use pf protein or sugar foe fuel. But when excessive saturated fats are eaten, they are simply layered onto hips, thighs and stomach as fat without undergoing any metabolic changes. These types of fat include dairy products, salamis and cured meats, commercially made cakes, biscuits and pastries.

4. Eat mainly complex carbohydrates. Every time you eat simple sugars. especially sugared drinks, blood sugar raises and causes a burst of insulin into the bloodstream. The liver then has to balance this insulin level by converting any excess into fats. The exception to this is during and directly after intensive training or competition. So, in order to keep your insulin production stable, eat complex carbohydrates, which are digested more slowly. Examples are cereals, wholemeal bread, pasta, brown rice, jacket potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables.

5. Eat more fiber. It helps to regulate insulin by slowing down the digestion of sugars and fats. 30-50 grams of fibre per day encourages the body to use food for energy rather than convert it to fat. High-fibre cereals, porridge, wholemeal bread, dried fruit, peas, beans, lentils, fresh fruit and vegetables are all fiber rich.

6. Eat essential fatty acids daily. These types of fat are essential for overall good health and are found in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel, herrings and sardines. Olive oil and flax-seed oils are also good sources. Don’t be scared by the fact that they are “fat.” Even if low calorie foods are essential for Rapid Weight Loss, you won’t need them in great quantities and the body simply needs them.

Best food for weight loss

When do we lose weight, and by weight I mean fat? When we burn more than what we intake. From this point of view, there is no weight-loss food, just food with more calories than others. Alright, but let’s suppose that what you intake and what you burn remain the same and you find you are not losing weight, you are indeed gaining pounds, slowly yet relentlessly. Why? It’s metabolism. Yes, metabolism is your ability to burn calories, the slower, or lower it is, the less you’ll burn, with the same amount of exercise. This means you’ll need less food to do the same things. Metabolism slows down with age, it all starts when you’re 25, but it’s hard to realize as it’s only about 3%, but then it can slow down up to 30% between 66 and 75 years of age.
So, what have fibers to do with all this and why are they a great weight-loss food? Let’s say that metabolism has its reason to exist in evolutionism. Needing less food when we’re old is a way for Nature to compensate for the reduced ability to hunt for it. In a society with no scarcity of food, and where gaining a bit of weigh is considered normal at a certain age, no wonder that many people over 50 are overweight.
So, for the third time, why are fibers a great weight-loss food? First of all they have a high satiating power: they send the brain a “stop food” signal. Also white meats, bitter fruit, vegetables and legumes have this power. On the other hand, with the lowest satiating power there are “concentrated” foods, with many calories in very little volume, like fat sauces and dressings, fry oily fruit, cheese, ham, cakes, snacks, chips.
Fibers are what make difference between normal food and a healthy weight loss food. No wonder they are the best ally in any weight loss diet, and here’s why:

• they give food more texture, so it takes longer to chew them. The longer we chew, the slower we eat, the less we over eat
• they give food more volume
• they remain for longer in the stomach. Again, this means hunger will stay away for longer

Fibers also help intestine regularity, which is something else we tend to lose with age. They absorb water and increase their volume, like sponges, and make intestinal transit time much quicker.

Where can we find this weight-loss food wonder, and how much of it do we need? 30 grams per day of fibers is a recommended daily intake for the average adult. Make sure you don’t overdo though: 50 grams per day should be the limit, in order not to alter the absorption of minerals like calcium and iron.
This low calorie foods list is not long, but essential. There are four categories of food you can go for: cereals, vegetables, fruit and legumes. With 500g vegetables and 300g fruit per day you’re sorted.
Enough fast weight loss tips for today, now stop reading and go get some weight-loss food.

weight loss motivation and rapid weight loss make you fly

A dear friend of mine is 44, is 5 1/2 foot tall and has just reached and passed the 175 lb of weight. She has recently lost an important person in her life, someone who was a guide for her. She is aware that her food binging is the result of this sense of solitude but she thinks there is not much she can do. At least until she decided to look for professional help.
Probably now it is too soon to see results, but I like to believe that her recovery (both as peace of mind and rapid weight loss diet) has started. She is happy with the professional she turned to, she is learning a lot of things about herself.
These are the three best advices she received, and that are starting to sink into her. I think that, even if your situation is not as bad as my friend’s, they remain three great weight loss tips.

Do not judge yourself
We do not need any “guide” in our life to lose weight, nor a “shield” to protect us. The more we are surrounded by people telling us how we should be, the worse we feel. The confidence given by an emergency exit from our problems can become a cage we trap ourselves into. One of the many things we can do when we feel trapped is sit and eat. No rapid weight loss can come out of this situation, we need to fell free to make the right (or wrong) decisions for ourselves. Do not judge yourself means to treat your excess of weight for what it is and say to yourself: “Alright, I am not losing weight, in fact I am gaining more and more weight everyday. This is an alarm bell, my inner self has a need, is looking for something, and I know that food is just a bad surrogate,” period. No judgment. The lack of success in our fast weight loss diet is not a direct consequence of the state of your life, it comes from somewhere else. As this is not a psychology paper, we can call this place the Soul, that apparently wants to be filled by food, but it is actually looking for something else. Focus on your needs: this is what the psychotherapist told my friend. Each and every morning, instead of crying in front of the mirror, telling yourself “I will never be able to lose weight again”, ask yourself “what do I really want, what are my real needs?”. If you have an answer, great, if not, again, do not judge yourself. Try again the next day. If you are consistent enough, the real voice will come out in the end and you will find that what you really want has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with food. Once you learn to listen to that voice, your path to a rapid weight loss will start.

Try to be a stranger from time to time
When she talks about her problems with life and weight loss, one thing my friend loves to say is: “yet, I know I love myself at least a little bit, I am always struggling to take more time for myself”. Of course we need to love ourselves and dedicate some time to us, but that is not really the point. What matters is to have a different mental approach towards ourselves. “Be a stranger to your life from time to time” This phrase told by psychotherapist, sounded quite obscure to my friend (and to me too) at the beginning, but now she is gradually getting the meaning of it. What my friend is now trying to do, instead of crying over her lost shape and her gone weight loss plans, is try and feel like a stranger to her problems. I have to confess I am also giving it a try and it is a liberating sensation indeed. For five minutes everyday, when the time seems appropriate, try to see family, food, work, weight loss problems as if they were not yours, but someone else’s. This helps take focus off all the issues and catch the breath for a minute. Again, the aim here is to fight the judgmental attitude we have towards ourselves.

The last advice my friend was given was: don’t fight your feelings.
If you feel you’re out of place, or you’ve lost all your confidence, feel free to think it. Don’t fight it by saying: “I’ll change my life” or “why am I not losing weight? After all everything’s fine in my life”, or “I’m not losing weight, so what? There are much worse things in life, people dying etcetera.” My friend is finding the courage to make room for its sense of inadequacy. She’s starting to say to her “yes, I feel inadequate and out of place”. She says it works, that this gives her a sense of liberation from self-judgment and she feels that the will to lose weight is coming back again.
That’s the real voice, that’s the start of a natural quick weight loss and a complete recovery of her life.