Losing Weight At Home

I don't go to a gym, I much prefer to exercise at home. I don't do lots of hard exercise, but I try to do a little.

I switched on the family Wii Fit machine today, to catch up with what my weight is currently, and to do a bit of a workout. The machine told me I hadn't been there for 19 days, which surprised me. It embarrassed me a little bit too - I know how good it is for me to do regular exercise.

This is good for all of us, but particularly good for people like me - I have a chronic illness (multiple sclerosis), and keeping my ability to walk around and keep active depends on actually keeping active. So I was happy that a comment from a friend on Facebook prompted me to get active again.

Having friends who can/will give these little prompts can sometimes be the difference between exercising and just sitting around. So I say a hearty Thank You! to Irma, for tweaking my conscience earlier today.

I usually have no problems with eating relatively well. I know what's good for me nutritionally, and I generally stick to what I know is the best to eat. If I go out for a meal, I make sure I choose low calorie foods, or if I want something higher in calories, I amend my diet for the day, and eat even better at home for the few days around my 'dining out' meal.

I was happy with my weight earlier today - the machine told me I'd lost a little weight. It also reminded me I still had a long way to go to meet the weight loss goal I'd set myself earlier. I'll work at that goal, and hope that I will meet it.

So the points I want to stress to readers are these:

• having a buddy to keep you on track can be a great help with exercise and weight loss
• eating out requires thought if it is not to lead to gaining weight
• keeping track of your exercise and weight are great ways to keep at it

Happy exercising, and Happy Weight Loss

Lose Weight in Summer

Can you lose weight in Summer? You sure can!

In Australia, we're in the beginning of the second month of Summer. Some states have certainly been having hot summer weather, sending people inside where it's cool. That means people may not be doing their usual jogging or walking to keep fit. They're staying inside instead, and maybe they're raiding the fridge in their search for coolness.

This can lead to eating too many sweet and cool things. This, added to the lack of exercise and combined with the usual Christmas season partying and good food, all adds up to danger time if you're trying to lose weight. There are some ways you can stock the fridge though, that can help you.

Keep the fridge topped up with calorie free drinks - water is still the best thirst quencher there is, so make sure you always have a jug of water in the fridge. There are a great many diet soft drinks available if you want a change from water every now and then.

There are some great cooling foods available in summer, especially grapes. Crunchy sweet grapes are a lovely snack, and don't add too many calories. Other good food ideas are sandwiches - cheese with pickles says summer to me, and I love the sandwiches nice and cool, sometimes with some chicken or turkey slices, yum!

Nuts are also a good snack. Yes, nuts are high in fat, but the fat they have is a fat that's healthy for you body. This doesn't mean you should go overboard and eat nuts all day, the weight would pile on if you did that. Nuts are high in protein though, and they have fibre too, so they fill up your tummy, and your body shouldn't get hungry as it would if you were eating sweet foods.

In summer, salads come to mind, and they can be a great way to have a healthy and low calorie meal. Be careful with the dressing you use though. There are some excellent low cal mayonnaise products available in the shops, and of course lemon juice is a great way to give raw vegetables a zing. Another interesting and no fat dressing is balsamic vinegar - excellent with fresh mushrooms and baby spinach!

For people with Wii Fit games and good air conditioning, there are lots of fun ways to exercise, alone or with friends. And of course summer in Australia is synonymous with the beach or the pool. Go outside and play in the water, fun, fun, fun!

So there are some ideas to help you lose weight over summer, enjoy!