7-Day Weight Loss Quickstart Guide

By Craig Ballantyne

Are you on a Detox diet? Everyone here in Toronto seems to be...

Just yesterday, one of my clients told me about his detox plans. For 7 days of the year, he buys a detox kit and follows the instructions to cut out all alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and refined carbohydrates - all while taking some supplements to help "detoxify" the liver and kidneys and extra fiber to help cleanse the colon.

Now I don't mind this client doing this, because he is a model client and follows a very healthy lifestyle all year round. At 40, his blood measures are very healthy, he lost a few pounds of body fat last year, and despite being in a high-stress financial job, he is a picture of great health.

Is the detox going to significantly improve his health? No, not really. 7-days of detox won't improve a healthy person's health status.

But neither will it suddenly reverse the bad health status of someone that has lived the Western Lifestyle for 40 years. In fact, I bet only 3 or 4 brave souls out of 100 unhealthy persons would actually finish a 7-day detox diet.

Quite frankly, the sugar cravings and caffeine withdrawal would cause such severe withdrawal symptoms that most people wouldn't last 72 hours. After all, caffeine is a powerful drug.

Detox diets might seem like a good idea, and might even give you piece of mind and help kick-start your weight loss program, but just realize that they are not a quick fix to your health problems. The long-term fix is dumping the Western Lifestyle, as I have said many times before.

Besides, if you think you can actually remove all the toxins in your body, you are being fooled. It can never happen. Every breath you take, every move you make, you are creating waste products in your body.

And many toxins are fat-soluble - meaning they are stored in our fat cells for months, and slowly released over time. So you'll never truly detoxify...but enough of science class, let's get onto the day-by-day fat loss guidelines.

Just remember: 7 days of the cleanest living can't reverse 51 weeks of the Western Lifestyle.

So here are your tips for the next 7 days to move towards lifelong healthy habits...towards living a healthier lifestyle. It is much better to spend all year avoiding as much crap as possible, than to try and sort it out in 7 days next year.

So I wish "Good health to you"! Here's what you should do for the next 7 days to get in better health and lose weight.

Day 1
In today's workout, choose an alternative form of cardio for this workout. For example, if you are a beginner, and you have been doing only walking for cardio, try and use the elliptical machine or stairmaster today. This is called cross-training and helps avoid overuse injuries caused by doing the same thing over and over again when you aren't prepared for it. If you are advanced, try some of the bodyweight circuits.

Day 2
Today's exercise requirement is just 30 minutes of cardio/activity. It can be traditional cardio, or again, bodyweight exercise. In addition, you need to clean out cupboards. Do NOT be afraid to throw out food - if it's garbage food, it's better in the trashbin than in your fat cells.

After you have cleaned out your pantry, prepare a healthy shopping list. Complete a 7-day food entry and review the results to help you organize your shopping list.

Day 3
Back to your regularly scheduled strength and interval workout.

Day 4
30 minutes of cardio/activity. And today, I want you to eat one new fruit and one new vegetable. If you aren't already eating grapefruit, try one today and see how it helps fill you up because it contains a lot of soluble fiber called pectin. Add a new vegetable, such as steamed asparagus or broccoli to your dinner.

Day 5
Do another strength and intervals workout today. To reward you for your hard work and diligent eating, you can have a treat/cheat meal or snack today. However, the remaining 90% of your daily nutrition must follow the Simple Weight Loss principles.

Day 6
30 minutes of cardio/activity. Check in with a member of your social support group. In addition, take some time and pick an activity you really like to do (yoga, sport, martial art, dance) and make it a regular habit on the weekend. This can be done on your own or with your social support group. You can now look forward to this "workout" all week. NOTE: It doesn't have to be done on Saturday, although is usually a free day for most.

Day 7
30 minutes of cardio/activity - and yes, walking around shopping can count towards your 30 minutes of activity. Plan, shop, & prepare for the week ahead. Make sure to include 1 new fruit and 1 new vegetable in your grocery list.

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines and all over the Internet, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

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Are You Trying To "Swallow" Your Anger By Eating When You Shouldn't?

by Dr. Patricia Carrington

Confined to his home with an injured knee, Bob finds himself consuming pizzas that he orders in "by the carload". He can't seem to get enough of biting into them. He doesn't suspect the real culprit –– a desperate anger at being helpless and at home. I will tell you more about his dilemma in a minute, but you may be wondering how can this be? Can there be a connection between compulsive eating and anger?

The answer is a resounding YES. No one enjoys feeling angry; and food can be a convenient way to "swallow" your anger right away – or at least that's the way it seems. In fact, food can be so soothing that it allows you to avoid any negative emotions you may be feeling when the cravings strike. If you reach for the food fast enough you probably don't even notice you're feeling anything unpleasant at all.

This is especially true for the emotion of anger. Our society conditions us to keep our angry feelings under control, but sometimes this includes not feeling the anger at all. If you're like most people, you're not comfortable with anger; and food is an easy way to keep it at bay and avoid expressing it.

Of course, the problem is that your anger doesn't go anywhere when you eat unwisely as a way of handling it. You still feel the anger; it's just hidden from your awareness for a while by the temporary comfort of food. Meanwhile, the downside is that you gain pounds and the feelings remain dormant, ready to come up to the surface and bring about yet another food craving. It's a no-win continuous cycle.

Back to Bob's situation. An active athlete his entire life, he is temporarily incapacitated with a bad knee injury and post-surgery he has no choice but to sit idle for a few months until his knee recuperates.

Bob's emotional equilibrium has been completely thrown off by this experience. He has no idea how to sit still without going crazy. Since cooking is difficult with his injured knee, he orders a whole pizza for delivery most days. He eats every bit of the pizza fiercely, biting into it and ripping the crust with his teeth. This works for him in a way because it helps him to forget his resentment and fasten his awareness only on the pizza and the biting.

But this is the problem – Bob is paying a big price for handling his anger in this way. He has put on 12 pounds in just a few weeks, and if he continues like this during the entire period of his recuperation, he'll put on a lot more pounds. Bob has obviously fallen victim to the habit of emotional overeating.

You can see the logic. Using food to suppress anger is the equivalent of "swallowing" your feelings rather than expressing them. And the biting action offers some relief because it satisfies the primal instinct to bite our enemies in defense. For this reason, crunchy foods may feel especially good at such times.

There are several techniques for conquering emotional overeating, but here is something you can do immediately to break the habit of using food as an anger suppressor:

Take a 3" x 5" index card and write the following sentence on it:

"Even though I'm angry at (insert name of person or situation) and can't express this openly, I choose to honor my anger and deeply and completely accept myself (or "love myself," etc.) without judgment."

Before you go to bed each night, and after you rise in the morning (and at any other time you wish), read this sentence out loud to yourself three times.

This is a mini-version of the powerful "EFT Choices Method" which is a highly effective technique for combating emotional overeating. EFT utilizes the principles of acupressure and uses light tapping on certain strategic comfort spots on your face and upper body to train your mind to become more peaceful and self-accepting – a great advantage for losing pounds. You will no longer feel that compulsion to grab for unnecessary food when you come into harmony with yourself and accept your anger.

Self-help techniques like EFT are especially important because they get to the core of the eating problem, while diets usually fail because they focus on what foods you are eating rather than the reason you're eating them.

If you find yourself consistently overeating and don't know why, you're probably using food to suppress certain feelings. The next time you are tempted to eat unwisely, think about whether you have reason to feel angry, and begin to pay attention to your angry feelings. If anger is the culprit (it might be some other emotion) try the EFT exercise given above, and watch the pounds melt away!

About the author

Psychologist Dr. Patricia Carrington is an internationally acclaimed authority on stress management. She makes it easy to conquer emotional overeating by counteracting the hidden emotions that can defeat any diet. To receive her FREE Special Report: "10 Surprising Reasons Why You Grab For Food Unwisely –– And How You Can Stop Doing It!" go to www.ConquerOvereating.com.